Demographics

This is an interesting article about how the preference for male offspring has skewed sex ratios in many countries, including China and India. I must admit that I was pretty happy when I found out my child would be a boy, but then again I was living in a household full of women, so I would always get a bit lonely! Anyway, the large-scale and long-term effects of having 119 men for every woman in China are certainly worrisome.

In other news, I recently read a National Geographic special about the face of 7 billion people. It looked at demographic traits and trends of our world's 7 billion-strong population. Apparently the largest age demographic in the world are 28-year-olds. I feel oddly honored and excited to be part of the world's largest age group. It seems like 1982 was a good year for procreation, and I'm a part of that. So from now on whenever I'm feeling isolated, or behind-the-curve, or a minority viewpoint, I can just remember that I'm in fact part of the largest age group across the world. The other aspects of National Geographic's analysis is that Han Chinese outnumber any other ethnic group, and males slightly outnumber females in the world.