| Proximate sources of population sex imbalance in India |
| Authors: |
Emily Oster |
| Source: |
Demography, Volume 46 - Number 2, May 2009: 325-339 |
| Topic(s): |
Childhood mortality
Son preference
|
| Country: |
Asia
India
|
| Published: |
MAY 2009 |
| Abstract: |
There is a population sex imbalance in India. Despite a consensus that this imbalance
is due to excess female mortality, the specific source of this excess mortality remains
poorly understood. I use micro-data on child survival in India to analyze the
proximate sources of the sex imbalance. I address two questions: when in life does the
sex imbalance arise, and what health or nutritional investments are specifically
responsible for its appearance. I present a new methodology, which uses microdata on
child survival and explicitly takes into account both the possibility of naturally
occurring sex differences in survival, and possible differences between investments in
their importance for survival. I find significant excess female mortality in childhood,
particularly between the ages of 1 and 5, and argue that the sex imbalance that exists
by age 5 is large enough to explain virtually the entire imbalance in the population.
Within this age group, sex differences in vaccinations explain between 20 and 30% of
excess female mortality, malnutrition explains an additional 20% and differences in
treatment for illness play a smaller role. Together, these investments account for
approximately 50% of the sex imbalance in mortality |
| Web: |
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emily.oster/papers/proxcause.pdf |
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