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What has contributed to improvements in the child sex ratio in select districts of India? A decomposition of the sex ratio at birth and child mortality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

Nadia Diamond-Smith ,
Nandita Saikia ,
David Bishai  and
Vladimir Canudas-Romo
Nadia Diamond-Smith*
Affiliation:
Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department, University of California, San Francisco, USA
Nandita Saikia
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
David Bishai
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA
Vladimir Canudas-Romo
Affiliation:
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Despite an overall downward trend in child sex ratios in India, some of the most imbalanced districts in 2001 (fewer girls than boys) showed signs of becoming more balanced in 2011. This analysis looked in depth at these districts to better understand the nature of the improvement in the child sex ratio using two rounds of data from the Census of India from 2001 and 2011. Data were used from the 153 districts that showed improvement in their child sex ratio between 2001 and 2011. The improvement was decomposed into: (1) less sex-selective abortion and (2) improved girl compared with boy mortality. Most of the improvement in child sex ratios were shown to be due to reductions in sex-selective abortion, although this still made up the majority of the cause of imbalanced sex ratios in 2011. Child sex ratio improvement has been happening in both rural and urban areas of India, and there is evidence of stagnation in mortality decline for urban girls.

Keywords

Sex ratiosSouth AsiaChild mortality
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 27 - 36
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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