asian american families and the birth preference for sons

According to demographers, seemingly minute statistical deviations in the proportion of boys and girls born to some Asian American families reveal a significant trend -- not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion: U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asians.

In many American families of Chinese, Indian and Korea descent, if the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy, according to recent studies of census data. If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male.

In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 -- or about 50 percent greater -- in favor of boys.

The preference for males isn't really surprising. It's a widely-known fact that this is a fairly common preference across cultures in Asia, and has seen some extreme results in societies like China, where the government's one-child police has led to the world's highest sex disparity among newborns -- about 120 boys for every 100 girls.

But sex-selection procedures, which offer families the option to straight up order the sex of their kid, bring a whole new dynamic to this cultural preference for boys... for better or for worse. Is there any wonder why clinics offering sex-selection procedures are heavily advertising their services in Indian and Chinese-language newspapers in the United States?