Some Asians in US using sex selection

[bjorkfan]

By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press/April 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - Having sons is important to many Asian cultures, and now American families from those groups seem to be asserting the same preference.

more stories like thisA new analysis of the 2000 Census shows that among US-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents the odds of having a boy increase if the family already has a girl or two.

The findings "suggest that in a subpopulation with a traditional son preference, the technologies are being used to generate male births when preceding births are female," coauthors Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund said of their findings, appearing in today's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We should emphasize that our paper does not imply that sex selection is practiced by all or even most Asian-Americans," they said in an e-mail response to questions. Most Chinese, Korean, and Asian-Indian parents do not sex select.

The discovery that some do, however, seems to be a new development in the United States, since the researchers didn't find the same variance in the 1990 census, Almond of Columbia University and Edlund of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., reported.

Edlund and Almond said they do not know what method is being used for sex selection, but they speculated that the most common is fetal ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby followed by disproportionate abortion of females. Ultrasound has improved in recent years and is being given earlier, they noted.

"Between 1989 and 1999, prenatal ultrasound use among non-Japanese Asian mothers rose from around 38 percent to 64 percent of pregnancies," they said, citing data from the US National Center for Health Statistics.

more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/04/01/some_asians_in_us_using_sex_selection/