A New Asian Crisis: A shortage of Girls

I just read an interesting and amusing chapter from Jim Rogers' book Adventure Capitalist regarding a new crisis developing in Asia. In particular, China and South Korea. Here are excerpts from the chapter:

"Thoughout history, Mother Nature has skewed birth figures in favor of boys, roughly 51 to 49 percent"

"Today, throughout the world, for the first time in history, people, for cultural and economic reasons, are purposely having fewer children. It costs a lot of money to have children, and the time and energy children require put a serious strain on the modern married couple's freedom. Many nations, for different reasons -e.g., socially engineering themselves out of a population crisis- are actively working toward lowering their birthrates. In China until recently, it was official policy."

"In Korea, couples are having fewer children for personal rather than social reasons - they are doing so voluntarily rather than under pressure from the government- but the results are no different from those in China, where the ratio for current births is 117 boys to every 100 girls"

"You have a child, it's a boy, you stop. Even if those with a boy try again, half the second children are boys. That alone skews the population. You have a girl, you try again: if the second child is a boy, you stop. If the second child is a girl? Numerous girls are given up for adoption. But many couples, using sonogram technology, especially when it comes to a second child, simply abort the females."

"Where is all this leading? One thousand years ago, at the turn of the last millennium, for a variety of reasons - principally because girls were seen as a drag on the economy - the same situation arose in Europe. There were more men than women in the population. And girls suddenly became very valuable.....I believe that today's twelve-year-old Korean girl, in a decade or so, is going to realize she can have almost anything she wants."

Through his unconventional observation. Jim Rogers decided to invest in companies that manufactured birth control pills because equivalent companies in the US skyrocketed after women began using the pill.

What happens in a society when women have a lot of power and choice? One is many will choose to marry later and delay having children. With many in the workforce with an income and no commitments, they will choose to experience things that their mothers did not- pamper themselves, travel and spend money on designer clothing and accessories.

Spas, women's designer labels and beauty products are some areas that are poised to benefit from these trends. As an investor, these are areas that I have begun to pay more attention to.