Immigation and Skewed Sex Ratios

2015-05-18

I weird thought on long-term world problems. Based on the goal of matching problems up so that they solve each other.

I recently read in the Economist that the is (still) a large group of mostly-black people in the US who are very poor and have nay number of social problems (drug use, single motherhood, etc.). You hear about this occasionally, and no one really knows how to solve it. However, one of the possible causes listed was that so many black men were in prison that there are only 83 available men per women in these communities. I am not quite clear on why they are assumed to stay within the poor black group, but I would guess that the neighborhoods are effectively segregated by economic factors.

I also remembered another statistic. In China, the One Child policy has resulted in a huge number of sex-selective abortions, meaning that there are now about 6 young men for each 5 young women. This is becoming an ever-larger problem, with no end in sight.

So my thought is, why can't some of these surplus Chinese men immigrate to the US and marry the surplus black women. The Chinese men would be able to fond wives, which I understand is very culturally important there. The poor black women would get dependable husbands and stable lives, which I think is what most of them want. China would have fewer people, which seems to be one of their major goals. The children there would have more good male role models (which I have read is important) and have a higher chance of growing up into good members of society. And if the women were in shorter supply, maybe the men who otherwise would end up in prison would do better in order to win them.

Its got to be worth a try.

Note: I use a working model that divides poor people into two groups: The "economically disadvantaged" are like the rest of society but with less money and will stop being poor with time. The "underclass" has additional social problems that will keep them as social dropouts unless fixed. The "poor blacks" referred to here are assumed to be underclass ones.

Reference: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21650533-what-dead-white-man-can-teach-america-about-inner-city-decay-fire-and-fuel

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