Georgia: The Human Sex Ratio

In an English class yesterday, I wondered aloud: Why do there seem to be so many male police officers who are married versus so many female police officers who are unmarried?

I think the explanation is a function of several variables, but the police students in this class (all unmarried women) said that the gender ratio in Georgia = one Georgian male per seven Georgian females.

I knew already that Georgia has negative population growth. Some of this is due to a declining birth rate and some is due to an economic diaspora of Georgian adults to the U.S., Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, and other parts. Georgia's Patriarch, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, is so concerned about the population's decline that he has exhorted Georgian women to have more children, promising that he will be the godfather of all third and fourth children in a family.

So when the police women claimed there was only one Georgian man for every seven Georgian women, I wanted to check it out.

Whoa. I stumbled on a South Caucasus anomaly that researchers have been looking at recently.

Georgia is second only to China in its ratio of boys-to-girls in the under-15 population. Georgia has 113 boys to 100 girls, while China has 117 boys to 100 girls. There is a similar situation in neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan. (Note: In the U.S. the ratio is 104 boys to 100 girls.)

Other data show there is an even more marked disparity when one looks at birth order in Georgia. For every 100 girls who are the third-born in a family, there are 150 boys born who are the third-born in a family. 

Such a large gender disparity in the under-15 age bracket puts Georgia on a par with societies infamous for practicing "gendercide," including China and India. The Council of Europe published Prenatal Selection in September 2011, in which it presumes, albeit without direct evidence, that the disparity in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan is primarily a function of pregnancy selection, aka abortion. 

It's important to note that, notwithstanding the under-15 disparity, in the 15-64 age bracket, Georgia is in the bottom 25 of the world for the number of men-to-women. In this cohort, there are only 93 men to 100 women. (Note: In the U.S., there are 100 men to 100 women in the 15-65 cohort.)

A 2000 World Bank report noted there were 124 Georgian women per 100 men. Unfortunately, the report didn't define the age range for these figures.

You never know what you're going to find when you start looking under rocks.