IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inu/caeprp/2006021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

India's Missing Women: Disentangling Cultural, Political and Economic Variables

Author

Listed:
  • Rubiana Chamarbagwala

    (Indiana University)

  • Martin Ranger

    (Indiana University)

Abstract

The severe anti-female bias in natality and child mortality that gives rise to India's missing women has been widely documented and various explanations ranging from agricultural labor demand to dowries have been offered in the literature. In general, the low demand for girls has been interpreted as a rational response to economic constraints. This paper shows the importance of culture both in determining the value of girls and in shaping parental economic constraints. We find that conservative cultural attitudes, proxied by the electoral success of religious parties, are positively correlated with anti-female bias. Moreover, higher household expenditure is negatively correlated with the number of girls. This suggests that we cannot rely on rising income levels, brought about by economic growth, to improve the demographic disadvantage faced by Indian women. Our policy recommendations therefore focus on changing attitudes of son-preference that motivate anti-female bias as much as enforcement of gender-equality legislation.

Suggested Citation

  • Rubiana Chamarbagwala & Martin Ranger, 2006. "India's Missing Women: Disentangling Cultural, Political and Economic Variables," CAEPR Working Papers 2006-021, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
  • Handle: RePEc:inu:caeprp:2006021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://caepr.indiana.edu/RePEc/inu/caeprp/caepr2006-021.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sajal Lahiri & Sharmistha Self, 2007. "Gender Bias in Education: the Role of Inter‐household Externality, Dowry and other Social Institutions," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(4), pages 591-606, November.
    2. Fernández, Raquel & Olivetti, Claudia & Fogli, Alessandra, 2002. "Marrying Your Mom: Preference Transmission and Women's Labour and Education Choices," CEPR Discussion Papers 3592, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Monica Das Gupta, 2005. "Explaining Asia's “Missing Women”: A New Look at the Data," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 31(3), pages 529-535, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Stimpfle & David Stadelmann, 2016. "Does Central Europe Import the Missing Women Phenomenon?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-04, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alexander Stimpfle & David Stadelmann, 2016. "Does Central Europe Import the Missing Women Phenomenon?," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-04, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    2. Jafarey, S. & Mainali, R. M. & Montes-Rojas, G., 2014. "The Anticipation Effect of Marriage on Female Education: Theory and Evidence from Nepal," Working Papers 15/12, Department of Economics, City University London.
    3. Alessandra Fogli & Laura Veldkamp, 2007. "Nature or nurture? learning and female labor force dynamics," Staff Report 386, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2005. "Why the Apple Doesn't Fall Far: Understanding Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 437-449, March.
    5. Guner, Duygu & Uysal, Gokce, 2014. "Culture, Religiosity and Female Labor Supply," IZA Discussion Papers 8132, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Agénor, Pierre-Richard & Canuto, Otaviano & da Silva, Luiz Pereira, 2014. "On gender and growth: The role of intergenerational health externalities and women's occupational constraints," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 132-147.
    7. Guido Tabellini, 2010. "Culture and Institutions: Economic Development in the Regions of Europe," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 677-716, June.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/9081 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Raquel Fernandez & Alessandra Fogli & Claudia Olivetti, 2004. "Preference Formation and the Rise of Women's Labor Force Participation: Evidence from WWII," NBER Working Papers 10589, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Nandi, Arindam & Deolalikar, Anil B., 2013. "Does a legal ban on sex-selective abortions improve child sex ratios? Evidence from a policy change in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 216-228.
    11. Akee, Randall K. Q. & Feir, Donn. L., 2016. "Excess Mortality, Institutionalization and Homelessness Among Status Indians in Canada," IZA Discussion Papers 10416, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Stephan Klasen, 2008. "Missing Women: Some Recent Controversies on Levels and Trends in Gender Bias in Mortality," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 168, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Donna Feir & Randall Akee, 2019. "First Peoples lost: Determining the state of status First Nations mortality in Canada using administrative data," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(2), pages 490-525, May.
    14. Daniel S. Grossman & David J.G. Slusky, 2019. "The Impact of the Flint Water Crisis on Fertility," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(6), pages 2005-2031, December.
    15. Ellen R. McGrattan & Richard Rogerson, 2004. "Changes in hours worked, 1950?2000," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 28(Jul), pages 14-33.
    16. Tiago V. de V. Cavalcanti & José Tavares, 2008. "Assessing the "Engines of Liberation": Home Appliances and Female Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(1), pages 81-88, February.
    17. Sushobhan Mahata & Rohan Kanti Khan & Soumyajit Mandal, 2023. "Dowry and Female Education: A Theoretical Evaluation (Article)," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 41-59.
    18. Hongbin Li & Junjian Yi & Junsen Zhang, 2011. "Estimating the Effect of the One-Child Policy on the Sex Ratio Imbalance in China: Identification Based on the Difference-in-Differences," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(4), pages 1535-1557, November.
    19. Vani S. Kulkarni & Manoj Pandey & Raghav Gaiha, 2013. "MDGs and gender inequality," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 18813, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    20. Kimberly Singer Babiarz & Paul Ma & Shige Song & Grant Miller, 2019. "Population sex imbalance in China before the One-Child Policy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 40(13), pages 319-358.
    21. Jacob, Arun, 2016. "Gender Bias in Educational Attainment in India : The Role of Dowry Payments," MPRA Paper 76338, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Female Disadvantage; Mortality; Son Preference; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inu:caeprp:2006021. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caeprus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.