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The stunning decline of the preference for having boys
Millions of girls were aborted for being girls. Now parents often lean towards them.
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People prefer girls for all sorts of reasons. Some think they will be easier to bring up, or cherish what they see as feminine traits.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The Economist
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Without fanfare, something remarkable has happened. The noxious practice of aborting girls simply for being girls has become dramatically less common. It first became widespread in the late 1980s, as cheap ultrasound machines made it easy to determine the sex of a foetus. Parents who were desperate for a boy but did not want a large family – or, in China, were not allowed one – started routinely terminating females.
Globally, among babies born in 2000, a staggering 1.6 million girls were missing from the number you would expect, given the natural sex ratio at birth. In 2025, that number is likely to be 200,000 – and it is still falling.
