0.6 Investment in human capital: education and health  (Page 15/16)

Consider that in humans, nature provides a sex ratio of 950 girls for every 10000 boys at birth. This has arisen by natural selection, because of higher mortality rates for boy infants

Put another way, nature provides about 105 boys for every 100 girls.(The standard way of defining the concept).

Consider the Chinese, Indian and Korean experiences.

In China in 2010 among newborns, there were 118 boys for every 100 girls. One implication: as this age cohort grows up, there will not be enough brides for nearly 20% of today’s baby boys. Little imagination is required to assess social, economic and even military implications of this development.

The foregoing is a result of strong son preference; couple with easier availability of sonograms.

Social scientists used to say that son preference in poor countries would decline as per capita income rose above subsistence levels.

Is this happening? Not much in China. It is happening, maybe in some regions in India, but not in Northern India’s richer parts.

In China, richer regions such as Shanghai and Guangzhou have much higher rates of son preference then in poorer provinces i.e. they have a higher rate ratio of boys at birth than girls.

In India the picture is mixed. The census data for 2009, compared to that of 2001, shows a rising male-female sex ratio in four states. The variation in India still has not been satisfactorily explained. Source___ [Source?]

It is worth noting that South Korea also displayed high rates of son preference from 1950-1990. But the sex ratio at birth peaked in 1990 and is now approaching the natural level, of 109 males to 100 females. A major reason for this development was that in the late nineties South Korea, already concerned about falling fertility rates, outlawed the use of sonograms for sex selections; one result was a rise in the ratio of girl to boy births in South Korea.

India has also banned ultrasound scans for the sole purpose of fetus sex determination. Also in India, sex-selective abortions are nominally illegal, but these bans have proven difficult to enforce.

Note that in societies where 4, 5 or 6 children were common in the sixties , a boy would almost certainly come along eventually. So son preference did not need to come at the expense of daughters .