They say that a good man is hard to find. But in some countries, the opposite is true: a good woman is hard to find—because it’s hard to find women at all. According to a recent article by the BBC, the Chinese city of Lianyungang has eight men for every five women. Ninety-nine cities in China have gender ratios as high as 125 (125 men for every 100 women, or a 5:4 ratio).

But China is not alone. India has a gender ratio of 113, and the ratio in Asia as a whole is 104.4. In the United States, by contrast, the rate is 97, meaning that there are more women than men.

Gender imbalances are caused by cultural and economic preferences for male children, which contribute to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Over 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia as a result of these practices.

Furthermore, some government policies may intensify these gender preferences. China’s one-child policy, for example, may cause concern among parents, particularly in rural areas, that having a female child endangers their family’s future. Government policies intended to combat skewed gender ratios, such as bans on prenatal ultrasounds for the purpose of determining the baby’s sex and bans on sex-selective abortion, have proven ineffective.

Unbalanced gender ratios have consequences that reach beyond just the mothers and children involved. According to Valerie Hudson, high gender ratios leave many men without prospects for marriage, which may mean these men have fewer incentives to contribute peacefully to society. The men with the slimmest prospects for marriage are likely to be unemployed, poor, and uneducated, so they are already at increased risk for violent behavior. Hudson cites statistical evidence showing links between high gender ratios and higher rates of violent crime, drug use, trafficking, and prostitution.

Hudson and co-author Andrea den Boer cover these links in greater detail in their book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population. In the 11th issue of the Environmental Change and Security Report, Richard Cincotta takes issue with some of the statistical methods that Hudson and den Boer use. He argues that what is important is not nationwide gender ratios, but the number of “marriage-age men” (25-29 years old) and “marriage-age women” (20-24).

While there may be some debate over whether the relationship between gender ratios and violent behavior is a causal one, there is little doubt about what causes the gender imbalances in the first place. An end to preferences for female children will be beneficial not only to girls and women, but to societies as a whole.

Photo Credit: A subway in China, courtesy of flickr user 俊玮 戴.

The Economist’s recent story “How to deal with a falling population” rightly states that a growing global population does not inevitably exhaust the earth’s resources, and that a shrinking population poses several serious threats to nations.

But the article downplays the impact of a large population. The total number of people on the planet has both global and local consequences. On the global level, each additional resident contributes to climate change, and this contribution is growing for citizens of developing countries making the transition to more western, carbon-consuming lifestyles. While 6.6 billion people have not yet run the oil derricks dry, large local populations have already had significant effects on local resources. In many parts of the world, women and children walk for hours to obtain water, firewood, and other basic needs.

The story seems to suggest that we should wait for governments to solve the problem of climate change. Yet many, including the author of one of the articles in The Economist’s September 2006 survey of climate change, are skeptical that politics can single-handedly and responsibly address this issue.

While governments work on large-scale policies, everyday people can influence natural resource consumption and climate change by focusing on population issues. One of the most effective ways to do this is by expanding access to family planning programs. Concerns about the possibility of coercion accompany all family planning efforts, but regulated, well-managed family planning programs tend to produce positive side effects, increasing women’s empowerment and education and expanding employment opportunities for both men and women.

It is important for governments and international institutions to craft prudent, long-term policies to address climate change. Yet we must also remember that the choices that ordinary individuals make can have significant positive impacts on health, economic development, and the environment.

The breadth and depth of statistics available on the WomanStats Project, a new online resource for statistics on women’s security, lends strength to the website’s claim that it is “the most comprehensive compilation of information on the status of women in the world.”

Nicholas Kristof’s editorial (subscription required) in yesterday’s New York Times outlines the huge challenges facing health care in developing countries. In addition to poverty, inadequate facilities, insufficient medications, and lack of trained personnel, civil conflict and instability join his list of “great killers” that significantly impede efforts to improve health and development in Rwanda, Burundi, and other African countries. Death and disease from poor health are thus part of the “the vast human cost” of allowing conflicts to “fester in forgotten parts of the world.”

The finalists of the World Bank‘s annual Development Marketplace competition are presenting their winning projects this week in Washington, DC. Overall, 2,500 proposals were submitted on population, health, and nutrition, and the final 104 projects—hailing from 42 countries around the world—will be on display for all to see on May 22 and 23.

Reporting on Population Action International’s latest report, The Shape of Things to Come, The New York Times’ Celia W. Dugger calls the link between young age structures and conflict “no simple coincidence,” observing that Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all suffer from bad governance, violent conflict, and young populations. Retired Army Major General William L. Nash sets the scene with military efficiency:

You’ve got a lot of young men. You’ve got a lot of poverty. You’ve got a lot of bad governance, and often you’ve got greed with extractive industries. You put all that together, and you’ve got the makings of trouble.

To an American “outsider” like me, a recent conference in Berlin on integrating environment, development, and conflict prevention reflected the stark contrast between our policies and those of the EU. Though we are confronting similar situations – indeed, the same situation – we are dealing with them quite differently. In recent years, European policymakers have tried to balance environmental and energy concerns, working to decrease humans’ impact on climate and the environment and encourage environmental cooperation, while still generating enough energy for growth.

For the past three years, the Parisian NGO Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography (CICRED) has funded programs around the world on the connections among population, environment, and development. Last week, representatives from these research programs—the overwhelming majority of whom are natives of the countries where the work was done—presented the findings of their studies at an international colloquium at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris.