Overpopulation is a myth

Look at China, which also has a large gender imbalance. Far from women being socially devalued, they are becoming more valued than ever. Chinese men literally have to bankrupt themselves in order to marry their sweethearts, as Chinese women right now literally have their pick of men.

You don't see packs of young men roving around gang-raping women in China, do you now?

So it's not just about gender imbalance, it's also about the kind of society where this imbalance occurs.

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I agree that it's a huge reach to link this gang rape to gender imbalance in India. There are gang rapes all over the world, in all cultures, in all time periods, in all demographic situations. You can't draw such broad conclusions from one crime.

Having said that, I don't think it's unreasonable to see some social problems down the line for countries with gender imbalances.

For a long time Chinese and Indian parents have aborted girls in favor of having a son on a large scale. This shows women are not valued as highly as men by their parents, for a variety of cultural and economic reasons. Western cultures long had a preference for a son to keep the family name going.

The economic reason is that not only do men earn more than women (and can thus take care of their parents better than daughters), but also when a woman is married in Asian countries she usually goes to live with her husband's family. The daughter's parents lose an economic asset when their daughter is married. But if their son gets married, they gain an additional asset.

If Chinese men are bankrupting themselves trying to compete for women, that's going to increase strife among men. Love triangles in which two men fight over a woman have been at the heart of literature and TV drama. Now imagine that drama increased several times because the competition is so much more fierce in China and India. The "loser" of a battle for a woman's affection can do violent things. It seems like a quarter of all murders involve a jealous ex-boyfriend.

Moreover, there is a lot of research showing single men are more likely to get arrested, use illegal drugs, drive drunk, and take more risks than married men. Car insurance premiums for men in America go down when they get married. It is in society's interest to get men married as soon as possible. But a gender imbalance increases the number of single men and consequently crime.

China should not only end the One Child Policy and encourage more children, but also encourage the inward immigration of foreign women to correct this imbalance.