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 The China Report (via BreakThrough News) discusses this question:

As if these children didn't have enough grief ? WASHINGTON — US parents looking to adopt a child prefer girls over boys, and non-black children over African-Americans, according to a new study carried out by a group of economists. The team from the California Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics and New York University studied five years worth of data from 2004-2009 culled from a website run by an adoption intermediary. They were able to see which babies attracted most applications from adoptive parents, and how much the parents would need to pay to finalize the adoption. They found that a non-African-American baby was seven times more likely to "attract the interest and attention of potential adoptive parents than an African-American baby," said Leonardo Felli, an economics professor at LSE. But there was not a similar preference in favor of Caucasian babies over Hispanic babies, even though all the adoptive parents in the sample were Cauc...

...and you live in the MD/DC/VA area, and you'd like to have a pet, consider adopting a puppy: The Fairfax County Animal Shelter brought up about 60 of the dogs on Thursday. Some of the dogs were sent to shelters in Alexandria. The Animal Rescue League in D.C. brought back about 105 dogs. The Montgomery County Humane Society has some as well. The shelters will provide safe, temporary homes for some of the dogs. Why are there so many dogs? Well : The massive breeding operation came to light after an investigation by the Humane Society of the United States. On Tuesday, Junior Horton, of Hillsville, voluntarily surrendered about 980 dogs, mostly small breed puppies like Yorkshire terriers and miniature poodles. The last I heard on TV, the dogs go for about $150.00 each. Which is actually a loss for the shelters because it costs about $2,000.00 to care for each canine.