The Chicago Tribune reports on the surplus of males in China.

Anyone paying attention would notice something odd about the elementary schools here. What the government and parents are awakening to--belatedly--is the danger inherent in what they see.

There are too many boys.

On the morning that first-semester grades were posted at Haikou City Ying Cai school, students hustled down staircases into class formations.

Boy-boy-boy-girl they scampered.

Boy-boy-boy-girl they lined up.

In one 3rd-grade class, a parent noted, there are 50 students, but only 12 or 13 girls.

The same imbalance can be found at other schools on the island.

"There are 56 kids in my class but only 15 girls," said 9-year-old Zhu De Zhao, a boy.

"There are 62 kids in my class but only 16 girls," said 9-year-old boy Wei Gang Jun.

The New York Times reports on the bureacratic measures being undertaken to mitigate the crisis:

In response, the government has introduced a test program under which about 300,000 rural elderly people are receiving annual pensions of $180, a good amount in the countryside, if they had only one child or if they had daughters.

Mr. Li said these fiscal incentives were intended to give monetary value to girls, and by doing so, reduce the incentive to abort them. Even so, the limited scope of the program has reduced its impact. Ms. Hao, the Beijing official, said Anxi was one of only 24 cities where girls were getting financial aid, and the budget is not expected to increase greatly.

Update: Here is a page which reviews sociobiological theories of sex ratio. This graph illustrates the ratio of males & females as a function of socioeconomic status. Note that in some cultures, like India, the spread of son preference seems to be facilitated by economic prosperity and the concomitant emulation of elite values.