Men Without Women (Ominous)

[n2doc]

Niall Ferguson – Sun Mar 6, 10:43 pm ET
NEW YORK – According to the United Nations there are far more men on the planet than women. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia. In this week’s Newsweek Niall Ferguson looks at the ominous rise of a bachelor generation.
In 1927, Ernest Hemingway published a collection of short stories titled Men Without Women. Today, less than a century later, it sums up the predicament of a rising proportion of mankind.
According to the United Nations, there are far more men than women on the planet. The gender gap is especially pronounced in Asia, where there are 100 million more guys than girls. This may come as a surprise to people in the Western world, where women outnumber men because—other things being equal—the mortality rate for women is lower than for men in all age groups. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen calls it the mystery of Asia’s “missing women.”

In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today’s Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/12761_worldwidegendergapmeansmorebachelorsinasia


The question left open by economists is what the consequences will be of such a large surplus of young men. History offers a disquieting answer. According to the German scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, European imperial expansion after 1500 was the result of a male “youth bulge.” Japan’s imperial expansion after 1914 was the result of a similar youth bulge, Heinsohn argues. During the Cold War, it was youth-bulge countries—Algeria, El Salvador, and Lebanon—that saw the worst civil wars and revolutions. Heinsohn has also linked the recent rise of Islamist extremism in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan to an Islamic youth bulge. Political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer warn that China and India could be the next countries to overdose on testosterone.

[reformist2]

1. Mystery?! It's hardly a mystery.

I thought that everybody knew that infanticide of baby girls was a huge problem in China.

[xchrom]

2. And here I thought this was going to be about the Spike and the Eagle. Nt

[DCKit]

15. It's raining men. nt

[Scuba]

3. Not to worry, there will be plenty of wars to even things out. n/t

[n2doc]

4. That's the point

And wars involving the 2 largest countries on earth (even if not against each other) are unlikely to leave us unaffected.

[AngryAmish]

5. If anyone thinks a Chinese mother is going to send her only son off to war

then you have not met a lot of Chinese mothers.

[n2doc]

6. She will when "national pride" is at stake

And I haven't met too many Chinese men in their 20's who still live with their mommas....

[Deep13]

8. How are they different than any other mothers?

Young men go to war all the time and some of them have no siblings. Anyway, what control does she have over it? If the state says "go," they're going.

[WatsonT]

12. I don't imagine most mothers are happy with the thought of sending

any of their children off to possibly die or be maimed.

That's why mass mobilization usually goes hand in hand with mass conscription.

[WinkyDink]

17. I'm sure they can withstand the tyrants.

[Codeine]

18. The entire modern history of mankind says otherwise.

Chinese folks are no more noble or rational than the rest of us.

[seabeyond]

7. lookie what happens killing off female fetus and babies. didnt really think it thru. nt

[WatsonT]

13. Perhaps it was tolerated at the top levels

to achieve exactly this result.

/bordering on conspiracy theory I know, but it would make sense if the long term goal was militarist expansion to promote male over female offspring for a generation.

[LibertyLover]

9. My daughter is from China - there are nights

when I can't sleep and I start worrying that because of the male/female imbalance in China that we will suddenly get a notice that the Chinese have retroactively revoked our adoption and want her back and the US says sure, not a problem, you can have her.

[madrchsod]

10. 22 million+ for a war with india over natural resourses

[WatsonT]

14. And to patrol the border with North Korea

when that nightmare finally collapses.

[WatsonT]

11. Wasn't there an article recently about China boosting it's military budget

by some large percentage (I forget the exact details but it was substantial)?

Seems their leaders paid attention in history class as well.

[WinkyDink]

16. They'd then better speed up that whole "men giving birth" thing. "100 million more guys than girls"

is such childish, unprofessional language.

[TahitiNut]

19. More Viagra, anyone?

:eyes: