Asia facing a crisis of 'bare branches'

If tens of millions of your society's young men were unable to find wives, would you be concerned? This is the troubling scenario that China and India now face.

The technology to identify the sex of a fetus became widespread in Asia in the mid-1980s, and more and more parents each year have used it to weed out less-valued daughters before they are born. Even though identification of the sex of a fetus, as well as sex-selective abortion, is illegal throughout Asia, the balance of boys and girls in the younger generations continues to worsen in many of these countries.

For example, in China the sex ratio for children up through age 4 is over 120:100 (120 boys for every 100 girls), according to the 2000 census. By comparison, a normal sex ratio for this age group is 105 or less. In India the sex ratio for children up through age 6 has increased over the past decade from 105.8 to 107.9, though this masks the fact that certain Indian states have much worse ratios — 126 in Punjab, for example.

In societies where the status of women is so low that they are routinely culled from the population, even before birth, the prospects for peace and democracy are seriously diminished.

The old saying goes, "When you pick up one end of a stick, you also pick up the other." When a society prefers sons to daughters to the extent found in parts of contemporary Asia, it will not only have fewer daughters but also create a subclass of young men likely to have difficulty finding wives and beginning their own families. Because son preference has been a significant phenomenon in Asia for centuries, the Chinese actually have a term for such young men: guang gun-er or "bare branches" — branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit. The girls who should have grown up to be their wives were disposed of instead.

We've already seen in China the resurrection of evils such as the kidnapping and selling of women to provide brides for those who can pay the fee. Scarcity of women leads to a situation in which men with advantages — money, skills, education — will marry, but men without such advantages — poor, unskilled, illiterate — will not. A permanent subclass of bare branches from the lowest socioeconomic classes is created. In China and India, for example, by the year 2020 bare branches will make up 12 percent to 15 percent of the young-adult male population.

Should the leaders of these nations be worried? The answer is yes. Throughout history, bare branches in East and South Asia have played a role in aggravating societal instability, violent crime and gang formation.