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The one-child policy also resulted in the worst gender imbalance in the world, which "could lead to instability as more men remain unmarried, raising the risks
by astebbin 8y ago
The one-child policy also resulted in the worst gender imbalance in the world, which "could lead to instability as more men remain unmarried, raising the risks of anti-social and violent behavior."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-says-its-gender-imbalance-most-serious-in-the-world/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-says-its-ge...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- frozenport 8y agoanti-social behavior is mostly manifest as a gaming addiction ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- jacquesm 8y agoAll it will take is a couple of wars to restore the balance. That's how it has always been historically.
- roenxi 8y agoA neat gender balance would be better for the people involved than an insanely skewed gender balance that favours men. That being said, one could substitute China -> America and, gender -> wealth, unmarried -> jobless, and I think the accusation would be similar. I've had Americans seriously tell me that the country is on the brink of civil war, which seems about as bad as anything that could come from China's gender imbalance. I'd link that to economic problems, it is the explanation that makes the most sense to me. Basically, there is a real concern; but I'm not sure it is an /unacceptable/ outcome of the One Child Policy. It might just be an outcome. The OCP can easily be cast as a policy of courage and prudence; overpopulation carries a real threat of starvation and collapse if it overshoots what the local resources can support.
- astebbin 8y agoI don't know what America has to do with anything, but China's income inequality is also worse than America's, so there's that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
- roenxi 8y agoAh, sorry, should have linked my source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribut... Wealth, not income. Although I do now see the data is 2000 era, so the situation might be different now. China was a very equal country by wealth back then, though.
- Animats 8y agoFor China, the difference between 2000 and 2018 is huge. In everything.
- dmix 8y ago> I've had Americans seriously tell me that the country is on the brink of civil war It's probably not a good idea to make value judgments based on the predictions of people obsessed with hysterical political news sources by companies who have make a living selling the public a worldview divided on stark black/white us vs them tribal lines. Where every minor bit of inane news coming out of Washington is blown up into big stories to fuel some grand political drama that never ends. Meanwhile the world IRL for the vast majority has hardly changed at all in any significant way.
- jdietrich 8y agoChina's gender imbalance is only marginally worse than India's. The one-child policy may have been a contributory factor, but the fundamental problem is a deep-seated cultural preference for boys. You can't change that unless you're willing to talk honestly about the dangers of gender imbalance. In that sense, China's dire prognostications are a sign of progress. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2018.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- dmix 8y ago> the fundamental problem is a deep-seated cultural preference for boys Not simply a cultural preference but a rational economic one as the odds a man will earn more than women has quite the better odds, and given their circumstances (and motivation to improve them) people are willing to compromise on the matter. Which is not simply the result of some conspiratorial patriarchal cultural phenomenon (although I'm sure that plays a role as it has elsewhere) but rather something amplified in developing countries where low tech labour and farm jobs are more common than knowledge/service work, favouring the physical attributes of men.
- ChoGGi 8y agoAlso no dowry needed for male children.
- 8note 8y agoin countries with so many men and so few women, I imagine that will switch
- kiliantics 8y agoActually in China the tradition is that the groom gives money to the family of the bride
- bwb 8y agoMight not be true, check out the book factory girls. Men stay on the farm and do not earn, woman to the city and make way more.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoFunny story: when my wife and I went in for our first ultra sound in Beijing, the technician wasn’t allowed to tell us the sex of the baby but covertly pointed out the obvious boy marker so that we didn’t really have a doubt.
- beerlord 8y agoIndia has a gender imbalance, and no one-child policy. The problem is a social preference for sons over daughters. What should happen is that the families of women are given money and houses by their daughter's husbands. Then girls will be seen as more of an investment than boys, and more families - particularly poor ones - will selectively abort males instead of females. Already this is playing out in China. Unfortunately this also becomes a problem in the West, because migrants from countries like India are predominantly male, and Indian mothers are still selectively aborting females even when they move to countries like the UK.