It's terrific to see a new book on an under-explored aspect of demography, namely the sex selection  against girls (by abortion or infanticide) which has left a number of Asian countries with a large imbalance of men over women. The book is Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl. It was reviewed this week by Joshua Kurlantzick, who described it as “a bracing work of investigative reporting.”

The figures are staggering. Rather than a female:male ration of 105:100, in China it's 121, in India 112, even in Albania 110. In 10 years China could have 30m adult men who cannot find wives, concentrated in the cities with large numbers of migrant labourers. Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's
most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every
100 girls. Altogether Asia is estimated to have 163 million 'missing' girls and women. If policies and attitudes changed overnight, it would be a generation before the imbalances were resolved.

The best economic analysis of this most vicious war of males against females, waged against the absolutely most vulnerable, is by Amartya Sen. He brought this issue to public attention in a 1990 article. His conclusion bears repeating:

“In view of the enormity of the problems of women's survival in large
parts of Asia and Africa, it is surprising that these disadvantages have
received such inadequate attention. The numbers of “missing women” in
relation to the numbers that could be expected if men and women received
similar care in health, medicine, and nutrition, are remarkably large. A
great many more than a hundred million women are simply not there
because women are neglected compared with men. If this situation is to
be corrected by political action and public policy, the reasons why
there are so many “missing” women must first be better understood. We
confront here what is clearly one of the more momentous, and neglected,
problems facing the world today.”