Major news in China on Jun 29: Leftover men to be a big problem

Top news in <People Daily>: Leftover men to be a big problem

The sex ratio at birth has been rising in the past 30 years

The sex ratio at birth is also known as newborn infant sex ratio. Under natural circumstances, the ratio of every 100 newborn girls to 103 to 107 newborn boys is normal. As the death rate of boys is higher than that of girls, the numbers of men and women are equal when they are at the age of marriage and childbearing. Therefore, the United Nations set the figures between 103 and 107 as the normal value.

Since the high sex ratio at birth was found in the third national census in 1982, China has experienced nearly 30 years of continually rising sex ratio at birth, reaching the highest value of about 121 in 2008, and became one of the countries owning the most imbalanced sex ratio in the world.

Yuan Xin, professor of economics at the Nankai University, said that the social problem caused by the high sex ratio at birth has gradually become observable and the most direct impact is the phenomenon of “marriage squeeze.”

If calculating according to the population statistical data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the men less than 30 years old is about 20 million more than the women less than 30 years old in China. In the next 10 years, the men newly joining in the matrimonial age will be 1 million more than the women of the same age every year. The young men and women born in the 1980s and 1990s are facing the increasingly serious challenge of marriage squeeze.

news@theasian.asia