We’re going to have an awful lot of lonely old men in India in 60 years time.
Admittedly, the same is likely in China – most of South and East Asia, actually – but it’s exacerbated in the two biggest economies because with the emergence of new monied classes in an old-fashioned patrilineal society (that is, one where it’s seen as more ideal to have sons, rather than daughters) we’re seeing an overwhelming number of people choosing to abort female foetuses.
According to Mara Hvistendahl, who has written a book called ‘Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men’ (she doesn’t get any prizes for a snappy title, at least from me, but her thinking and actual writing seems to be sound), we’ve already seen 160 million would-be women disappear from the world in the past few decades. They’re women that previously would’ve been born and raised in countries, but thanks to medical advancements that allow couples to see the sex of their child, they’ve been terminated before a full pregnancy.
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