Content area
Full text
The authors of a new study look at the excess of single men due to the marriage market and gender imbalance in China as a cause of an increase in crime. In China, approximately 120 boys are born for every 100 girls. This issue stems in part from the infamous one-child policy that China put in place in 1979. The combination of a cultural bias favoring boys and this policy has created a gender disparity that is not seen in any other country. Between 1998 and 2004, China has also seen a rise in criminal offenses by 13.6 percent. An increase in the number of young unmarried men, who are traditionally more crime prone, can help account for the increase in crime in China according to the December 2013 article "Sex Ratios and Crime: Evidence from China" by Lena Edlund, Hongbin Li, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang in The Review of Economics and Statistics. Ultimately, the authors recognize that, while the rise in sex ratios has coincided with a dramatic increase in crime, a causal link is difficult to establish. From 1998 to...