经济学人下载:生个甜甜和香香又何妨

India’s sex ratio is getting worse. The trend can be reversed.
印度的性别比例扭曲越加严重，这个趋势能够逆转

THE news from India’s 2011 census is almost all heartening. Literacy is up; life expectancy is up;family size is stabilising. But there is one grim exception. In 2011 India counted only 914 girlsaged six and under for every 1,000 boys.

来自印度2011年的人口调查的消息几乎都让人振奋。识字率上升；预期寿命上升；家庭规模稳定。但是有一个例外，很严峻。2011年，印度6岁及其以下的儿童中每1000个男孩对应只有914个女孩。

Without intervention, just a few more boys would be born than girls. If you compare the numberof girls actually born to the number that would have been born had a normal sex ratio prevailed,then 600,000 Indian girls go missing every year. This is less distorted than the sex ratio in China,but whereas China’s ratio has stabilised, India’s is widening, and has been for decades. Sex selection is now invading parts of the country that used not to practise it.

在自然情况下，出生的男婴只比女婴多一点。如果你按照正常的性别比例比较一下实际出生的和本应该出生的女婴的数字，你会发现每年有60万的印度女孩不翼而飞。这个性别比例的扭曲程度虽然比中国轻一点，但是中国的性别比例已经稳定，而印度的还在扩大，且这种状况已经持续几十年了。性别选择正在侵蚀着印度的部分地区，而这些地区以前不曾这样过。

India’s sex ratio shows that gendercide is a feature not just of dictatorship and poverty. UnlikeChina, India is a democracy: there is no one-child policy to blame. Although parts of the countryare poor, poverty alone does not explain India’s preference for sons. The states with the worst sex ratios—Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat—are among the richest (see article), which suggests distorted sex selection will not be corrected just by wealth or government policy. But it can be corrected.

印度的性别比例表明性别灭绝不只是由于专制和贫穷。与中国不同的是，印度是个民主国家，没有只生一个孩子的计划生育政策。尽管印度的部分地区很穷，但是仅仅贫穷不能解释印度对于男孩的青睐。性别比例最扭曲的邦，比如旁遮普邦、哈里亚纳邦和古吉拉特邦，都是印度最富有的地区。这表明扭曲的性别选择将不会由于财富和政府的政策得以纠正。不过，性别比例是可以得到纠正的。

Parents choose to abort female fetuses not because they do not want or love their daughters, but because they feel they must have sons (usually for social reasons); they also want smaller families—and something has to give. Ultrasound technology ensures that this something is a generation of unborn daughters, because it lets them know the sex of a fetus. Sex selection therefore tends to increase with education and income: wealthier, better educated people are more likely to want fewer children and can more easily afford the scans.

父母选择堕掉女胎不是因为他们不想要或者不喜欢他们的女儿，而是因为他们觉得必须有儿子（通常由于社会的原因）；而且他们想要更小的家庭，因此要放弃一些东西。超声波技术能够让父母们知道胎儿的性别，因此确保了他们放弃的是一代未出世的女儿。因为性别选择随着教育和收入的增加而趋于流行，所以更富有、受教育更好的人们更有可能要更少的孩子，也能更轻松的负担检查的费用。