TY - JOUR
T1 - Evidence of Self-correction of Child Sex Ratios in India
T2 - A District-Level Analysis of Child Sex Ratios From 1981 to 2011
AU - Diamond-Smith, Nadia
AU - Bishai, David
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge Caroline Moreau, Stan Becker, Nan Astone, Monica Das Gupta, and Vinod Mishra for their advice, feedback, and help on this research. The authors would also like to acknowledge the support of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of California, Berkeley Demography Department and Library, and the National Institute of Child Health and Development Grant for Multidisciplinary Training in Population.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Population Association of America.
PY - 2015/4/1
Y1 - 2015/4/1
N2 - Sex ratios in India have become increasingly imbalanced over the past decades. We hypothesize that when sex ratios become very uneven, the shortage of girls will increase girls’ future value, leading sex ratios to self-correct. Using data on children under 5 from the last four Indian censuses, we examine the relationship between the sex ratio at one point in time and the change in sex ratio over the next 10 years by district. Fixed-effects models show that when accounting for unobserved district-level characteristics—including total fertility rate, infant mortality rate, percentage literate, percentage rural, percentage scheduled caste, percentage scheduled tribe, and a time trend variable—sex ratios are significantly negatively correlated with the change in sex ratio in the successive 10-year period. This suggests that self-corrective forces are at work on imbalanced sex ratios in India.
AB - Sex ratios in India have become increasingly imbalanced over the past decades. We hypothesize that when sex ratios become very uneven, the shortage of girls will increase girls’ future value, leading sex ratios to self-correct. Using data on children under 5 from the last four Indian censuses, we examine the relationship between the sex ratio at one point in time and the change in sex ratio over the next 10 years by district. Fixed-effects models show that when accounting for unobserved district-level characteristics—including total fertility rate, infant mortality rate, percentage literate, percentage rural, percentage scheduled caste, percentage scheduled tribe, and a time trend variable—sex ratios are significantly negatively correlated with the change in sex ratio in the successive 10-year period. This suggests that self-corrective forces are at work on imbalanced sex ratios in India.
KW - Child sex ratios
KW - Fertility
KW - Fixed-effects models
KW - India
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84939939701
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84939939701#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1007/s13524-014-0356-z
DO - 10.1007/s13524-014-0356-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 25504536
AN - SCOPUS:84939939701
SN - 0070-3370
VL - 52
SP - 641
EP - 666
JO - Demography
JF - Demography
IS - 2
ER -