India's skewed sex ratio | Hacker News Reader

India's skewed sex ratio

economist.com

47 pointssasvari40 comments

The fundamental problem seems to be that of parents making choices that either benefit primarily them at the expense of their children or benefit their children only if they grow up to be exactly like their parents. This is somewhat unusual (one would assume that most parents would place their children before themselves), and it appears to be a trait common to many cultures in the third world (i.e., in addition to biased gender ratio, indoctrination of children into the tradition/religion/culture of their parents, child labor, arranged marriage, having lots more children than is sustainable to be "competitive" with other families and to ensure help from your offspring into the old age as a kind of "life/health insurance").

I wonder whether availability of medical care and better retirement plans is a strong predictor of how much "child exploitation" by whatever measure is taking place.

We don't have slavery anymore, and we have had emancipation of women in many places, yet most of the world has never had the emancipation of the future generation.

This is common thinking with everyone.

My parents thought I should rather be a janitor, or maybe a shop mechanic than a developer because it would be "good, steady work" and I wouldn't have to move away to find a job. Utterly stupid, even the people I worked with on a paving crew said programing was a better career than anything else. Remember, one of the arguments against not having children is "who will take care of you when you're old?"

But on your point about "emancipation of the future generation." There will never be such a thing, due to the inherent selfishness of a population. This is why adoption is not a big deal: even if it's not you're genes, it's still your mores being instilled on the next generation of your tribe. Which is why the fear of racial shift is so idiotic: in fifty years we Americans will still be loud, stupid jerks no matter what our skin color.

> on your point about "emancipation of the future generation." There will never be such a thing...

Agree on your other points, but disagree on this one. I think such "emancipation" of the young at least partially has happened in the developed countries (although it is rarely talked about in terms I describe it). It was enabled first by modern education (kids spending more time with their peers grouped by age and being taught arts and sciences in school as prescribed by government standards and not by their parents), and second by the spread of communication technologies (first by television and mass media, then by the Internet and the cell phones). I don't think it has fully happened though because many important (from my perspective) things such as personal finance management, political awareness etc. are not taught to high school-level students assuming they are either "too young," or leaving that area for their parents to teach, which ultimately contributes to much more financial and political weight being wielded by the older generation. See modern Japan for an example why too much power in the hands of the older generation may not be desirable.

You've got a good point, however I think the lengthening and restructuring of adolescence is being counteracted by the disenfranchisement of the youth: by the time that someone is old enough to have any power to change things, they've been steeped in the culture long enough to have accepted it.

Every generation is rebellious in youth, and conservative in age. The problem is that the lengthening of youth means that it's easier for the ruling gerontocracy to remember the pathways to rebellious ideology, and board that up.

> Every generation is rebellious in youth, and conservative in age

That's a common thing to say, but it only touches upon appearances. What does the older generation have to rebel against if it is already its own source of authority? On the other hand, as soon as the 14-year olds develop their own source of authority separate from that of their parents, teachers, etc., they are labeled as unstable psychotic teens and measures are taken to make them conform.

Being a Nietzschian, I am strongly of an opinion that, "once a rebel, always a rebel," and it may well be that the baby-boomer generation will have set the mark for generational rebellion that will not be surpassed by their children or grand children.

I read about a scam somewhere (probably apocryphal) that a doctor could guarantee a boy. People cheerfully paid the fee and undertook the procedure.

If a boy was born, everyone was happy and the doctor kept his fee. If a girl was born, the parents would go back to the doctor where he would explain that the technique wasn't 100% reliable but happily gave a refund with a little extra as a goodwill gesture.

The scam was thet the doctor wasn't doing anything at all. Births remained roughly half boys and half girls. The fees paid by parents of baby boys more than covered the running costs and the goodwill payments.

(I'm not going to check Snopes. Its such a good story I don't really care if its real or not.)

I'd be surprised if it isn't true, and isn't happening right now in several places. It seems like a really simple scam that would work well and not attract enough attention to fail due to the "doctor" getting a bad rep unless some of those the "treatment" failed for were not happy with the level of compensation.

Back in the days when cheques were common there was a great scam in the UK. A company promising to sell porn magazines and VHS tapes at (for the time) cheap but believable prices, but never sending out any product (never actually having any stock). They just worked on the basis that most people would not complain. When people did complain they appologised, gave some excuse about their importers failing to deliver or some such, and a full refund was sent by cheque. To reduce the outgoings, the cheques carried the (obviously porn related) name of the company meaning many people didn't want to pay them in as it would require looking the cashier in the eye if they noticed where the cheque had come from (there were no automated cheque processing machines back then). The scam only came to light when the "company" was investigated for other irregularities (IIRC some of the products they were claiming to sell were illegal, or at least close enough to the legal borderline to warrant investigation, which is what caught the eye of the authorities).

This reminds me of an old stock tip scam. A scammer would mail a large number of stock tip letters, 50% claiming that the market would move up the following week and 50% claiming that it would go down. The scammer would then repeat this each week, but would only send new batches to the people who had gotten the letters that had the correct "prediction" the previous week. After a while, some people would believe in the scam letters, as so many of them had "predicted" the market correctly. Falling for the scam, those people would send large sums of money to continue to receive the stock tips, leaving the scammers rich.

My mother-in-law tells a story of a doctor she knew who would tell parents-to-be he could always predict the sex of their baby (this was before scans were so common). He would tell them "boy" and would write it down on a piece of paper and put in a drawer, "so neither of us forgets". If it was a boy, they'd be very impressed. If it was a girl, they'd go back to him, he'd pull out the piece of paper to prove to them, no, he had been right. Of course on the paper he'd written "girl".

There are many MANY old wives' tales in India about diets and techniques to guarantee male offspring, so you can be assured that there are crooks and charlatans taking advantage of a wilfully gullible populace.

I wouldn't be surprised if the more unscrupulous ones took this to a greater extreme.

I wouldn't worry. Human societies have very effective methods for dealing with excess men.

Here's a popular one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War

EDIT: I really am worried. This is a terrible situation and one which I could see as getting much worse.

China also has excess men. And India and China already have a territorial conflict. If there is a third world war, it's probably going to be there.

Perhaps a rehash of the theft of the Sabines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

Or the Taiping Rebellion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

There's a strong perception in both China and India (mostly in China) that the future war between China and India will be triggered by none other than western countries! :-P

Well, that's one of looking at it. However, I think, we must not discount cultural factors that play a part on how a society deals with it. Some societies arrive at a more pacifist solution such as Polyandry. Societies in the state of Kerala (and other as well) had Polyandry as a social arrangement at some point in history, I believe, partly as a result of skewed sex ratios.

> Societies in the state of Kerala ...

This is very very interesting because right now, due to a lot of education and a relatively higher standard of living Kerala can boast of a sex ratio of 1084 females/1000 males the only state in India with more females than males.

Also, Kerala is famously a stronghold of a Communist Party (the Communist Party of India (Marxist)).

I wouldn't worry about [terrible thing]. There are natural responses to [terrible thing] that are fully foreseeable consequences of [terrible thing]. One of them is [even more terrible thing].

Strangely, Western response to famine or war in impoverished countries has tended to exacerbate (or even create) the crises at hand. Doing something may be seen as a sensible thing, but perhaps Africa would have been better off if the West did nothing to help. Even though it involves the least effort, doing nothing is categorically the toughest thing.

Good point, but the worst interventions had been of a military kind, and I don't think the grandparent has a military intervention in mind.

It's easy to see how bad military interventions are. You have bodies with a clear line of responsibility back to the war, destroyed buildings, etc.

What's the cost of inept Western assistance to Africa when it actively impedes them developing their own civilization, accidentally enforcing poverty and propping up terrible governments? This, too, destroys wealth and lives, up to and including killing people, but it's a lot harder to see. It is, nevertheless, real. Real people are really dying and living in nightmare states.

Which is really worse? I don't have an answer, which is my point. It's hard to tell. But it's possible to rack up death tolls with non-"military intervention" that can put most military interventions to shame.

> It's easy to see how bad military interventions are...

Yes, except replace the word "easy" with "can be measured." Once you get into the domain of things that cannot be measured (or "not easy to see" as you say, presumingly requiring interpretation -- by whom?), you lose the empirical ground, and thus anything you say becomes close to worthless. I would rather stick to things that can be measured and not require speculation.

An authentic non-Western civilization in Africa is a very beautiful dream, but there is one huge problem to it: guns are effective and can be smuggled, whether by white people or black people or whoever.

Try looking at the spread of Christianity in Africa. Suppose there were no Western missionaries. Would we have had a "more authentic Africa" then? Probably not, we would have likely ended up with a "more Islamic Africa" instead. But don't dwell too much on this because it is just another of those "would" things that can't be measured.

I don't particularly care about "authenticity" of any culture. I don't really think there is a such thing. I'm strictly talking about how aid has had negative impact, so when I talk about them not forming "their own civilization" I simply mean their inability to date to successfully form stable governments, civil services, etc., regardless of their structural details. There are probably ways of giving aid that would have not had negative effects, though it's hard to know.

Related, Indian men are really, really bad for sexual inequality and violence: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-03-07/india....

Pardon the meme, but here is an instructive example of both sides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndX2RFHmMNg (HOW CAN SHE SLAP)

Several points come to mind. The first is that people repeat how they have been treated. The second is that men are usually much stronger than women - if it has come to physical fighting you know who is going to come out ahead. The third is that a quick glance at actual statistics shows that women are the victims of violence far more often than they are perpetrators. (This is, admittedly, most because of point #1.)

It could turn around. Fewer women will mean that your daughter will be able to choose from a pool of single men and perhaps choose the richest one. If your family is poor, it can benefit from this.

I think India should be more concerned about its overpopulation than about single men, if anything having skewed sex ratios will help her reduce overpopulation in the long term.

You would think. But the article says You might have thought that scarcity would lead to girls being valued more highly, but this is not happening.

Rich men may find it difficult (socially) to chose a bride below their social class/caste and traditionally the daughter's parents have to pay the hefty dowry. But either way, it's generally the choice of the parents and not the bride or groom.

"have to"?

I'm cheerfully imagining a conversation between myself and someone wanting a dowry for marrying my hypothetical daughter.

From the article:

>Women in India are sometimes permitted, even encouraged, to “marry up” into a higher income bracket or caste, so richer men find it easier to get a bride.

http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmediumboss.blog...

A thought-provoking post along similar lines.

I foresee a lot of very uptight men in India's future, combined with a booming brothel industry staffed by women brought in from outside. Then there is the usual war with China angle which is facing the same demographic issues.

Even more problematic is the urgent need in many families to get the girl married soon and preferably to guys who are 3-4 years older to her. While it may sit well with many girls to have an arranged marriage(just look at the huge online matrimonial industry in india), the problem is that parents give into excess peer pressure in many situations and force the girl into a situation. They even sugar coat it, they would tell you you have 1 year if you asked for time, but you must choose. The parent's fears are somewhat elevated by the fact that all prospective grooms are looking at girls in the age bracket of <26 and preferably a age diff of 4 years. And dont even get me started on the caste angle that narrows down the choice to < 2-3% of the population(Is inter community marriage not akin to almost inbreeding? What about the poor gene pool? Not to mention the ick factor). I am a guy and looking from the outside who has never been on any side of this system. I can say that though this system has its upsides, like more stable financial prospects etc and perhaps the fore fathers in there infinite wisdom had a method to the madness. But is this hurting India due to the people who do it all wrong?

The law of not revealing gender before birth has been there for a while, doesn't seem to work all the time and moreover the perception/acceptance towards girl child should change which is slowly happening due to people getting educated.

I did not realize West Bengal was below the "natural" rate. Kerala (higher than natural rate) and West Bengal are the top two states on the list. While geographically and culturally distinct, they both have a habit of electing communist parties to power and are labor union friendly states.

Is the average mentality of 'equality' in those two locations above the norm of the national average? Is this a small part of what leads to better representation for women?

Wow. Doesn't take much to get Lord of the Flies to break out on Hacker news (in response to comments about war, rape, etc).

There's also the possibility of mass emigration. Like say if one country had a need for a lot of skilled engineers, programmers etc and another country had a hefty supply of the aforementioned.

The countries themselves are left as an exercise for the reader.

Interesting..even i was observing, within an hour this thread got carried away into different directions even though the article and some of the comments were good.

Someone on twitter had a suggestion for dealing with this: "India has more boys than girls. Pakistan has more girls than boys. Fuck the partition, let's kiss and make up." (http://twitter.com/#!/amreekandesi/status/54963127854448641)

That's a sad social status quo.

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