Social Upheaval Ahead As Abortion Leads To Global Surplus Of Males
By Evangelical Focus August 23, 2021
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According to a research recently published in the BMJ Global Health journal, around 4.7 million girls could be missing worldwide by the end of the decade due to sex-selective abortion.
This loss could reach 22 million globally by 2100 "if all countries at risk of boosting this ratio above its natural level, including densely populated countries, such as Nigeria and Pakistan, do so", warn the researchers.
The research points out that sex-selective abortions, "the main mechanism behind sex selection", have been on the rise for the past 40 years "across a range of various countries from Southeast Europe to South and East Asia".
Surplus of young men in around a third of the global population
It also underlines that the projected shortfall in the number of girls being born will lead to a surplus of young men in around a third of the global population by 2030, "with the full social and economic impacts as yet unknown".
The authors based their projections on a comprehensive database of 3.26 billion birth records from 204 countries over the last 50 years, as well as the experience of countries facing rising sex ratios at birth before 2021.
Afterwards, focusing on 12 countries where the male-to-female ratio had increased since 1970 and another 17 where that ratio was at risk of increasing due to social or cultural trends, they simulated two scenarios.
"Scenario 1 assumed trends only for countries with strong statistical evidence of an increasing imbalance in sex ratio at birth, while scenario 2 assumed sex ratio trends for countries at risk of increasing the ratio, but with no or limited evidence of this". explains the research.
The results showed that the sex ratio at birth is most likely to stabilize and then decline within 20 years in countries currently affected by a surplus of liveborn boys, such as China and India, which have the highest number of annual births in the world.
"Fewer than expected females in a population could result in elevated levels of antisocial behavior and violence, and may ultimately affect long-term stability and social sustainable development", stresses Dr Fengqing Chao, the study's lead author from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) of Saudi Arabia.
Originally published at Evangelical Focus - reposted with permission.
