Asian immigrants use medical technology to have sons

Researchers are finding the first evidence that some Asian immigrant families are using U.S. medical technology to have sons instead of daughters, apparently acting on an age-old cultural prejudice that has led to high ratios of boys to girls in parts of China and India. The new research, produced by independent teams of economists who arrived at similar conclusions, focused on Indian, Chinese and Korean families who first had girls and then used modern technology to have a son. With birth records in Santa Clara County showing that Asian mothers are more likely to give birth to sons than white or Latino mothers are, the new data could reawaken a local controversy. Some local South Asian women have pressured local Indo-American newspapers and magazines in recent years to stop running ads for medical procedures that offer prospective parents the promise of a son. For some South Asian couples, having a boy is a "status symbol," said Deepka Lalwani of Milpitas, the founder and president of Indian Business & Professional Women, a nonprofit business support network. "If a woman has male children, she feels in her family, certainly with her in-laws, that her status will go up because now she is the mother of a male child." Such cultural pressures may explain the recent findings. A Columbia University study suggests that Chinese, Indian and Korean immigrants have been using medical technology, most likely including abortion, to assure their later children were boys. And a soon-to-be published analysis of birth records by a University of Texas economist estimates there were 2,000 "missing girls" between 1991 and 2004 among immigrant families from China and India living in the U.S. — children never born because their parents chose to have sons instead. "We didn't expect to see a male bias. And for the first child, we didn't find one. It seems to appear after a first daughter, and more strongly after a second daughter," said Douglas Almond, co-author of the Columbia study. Among Indian families in Santa Clara County in the 1990s, Texas economist Jason Abrevaya found a 58% chance of having a son among families that first had two girls — significantly higher than the natural 51% chance of having a boy. The teams found no comparable bias toward boys among white, African-American and Japanese-American families that first had girls.