AS of Oct. 26, 2011, the world population stood at 6,986,951,000, according to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA).
Among the worrisome data in a report made available by UNFPA to media persons in Manila is that the Philippines, tiny as it is, is among the world’s most populous nations—ranking 12th with 94.9 million inhabitants.
One news account said that almost 50 percent of the Philippines’ population are now congested in the urban centers, as more people leave the rural areas “to find better opportunities and escape violence and natural disasters.” While globally the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her child-bearing years has dropped from six to 2.5, six has reportedly remained the average number of children of Filipino women. It is said that Filipino women only desire to have an average of four kids. Will this problem be addressed by the proposed Reproductive Health Bill still hanging fire in the House and the Senate? Is this considered a problem by most Filipinos to begin with?
On the macro level, however, experts are agog over the growing imbalance in the gender ratio of the world’s population– there are many more men than women.
In India and Vietnam, there are 112 boys for every 100 girls. In China the figure is 120 to 100, and in some places worse.
The problem was brought about by the preference of some nations for sons over daughters. The widespread use of ultrasound has enabled couples to determine the sex of their babies, leading to a decision to abort them, openly allowed in many populous countries like India.
What’s wrong with having more males than females? Some forecasts say that the effects of this kind of imbalance can be as devastating as climate change. They said that sexual predation and violence will worsen in male-surplus societies.
“Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live in,” writer Mara Hvistendahl said, adding “often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent.”
The fears expressed by Hvistendahl are not entirely unfounded. It is said that polyandry, in which a woman has two or more husbands at a time, is one of the possible effects.
The UNFPA report and commentators are silent on whether the evident rise in the population of male gays would have any bearing on this situatition.
