Sex-Selective Abortions and Fatal Neglect of Young Girls

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11291086
AutoresRebeca Echavarri (0000-0002-0216-2826, Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNA), autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen44
Número1
Fecha de publicación2025-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPopulation Research and Policy Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0167-5923 • E-ISSN: 1573-7829
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11113-024-09920-4
OpenAlexW4405944357
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas26

A significant portion of female neonatal, infant and child mortality could be avoided. These girls form part of the phenomenon known as missing women. Previous literature has examined whether families that prevent unwanted (female) pregnancies from reaching term provide greater care to the surviving daughters, but it reports mixed results. An avenue that has received limited attention is the possibility that explicit discrimination against girls legitimates otherwise non-realized behaviors, leading to additional fatal neglect. This paper contributes to the literature, going a step further in the causal identification of aggregate prenatal discrimination effects on postnatal discrimination by comparing the survival outcomes of brothers and sisters who were exposed to different levels of prenatal discrimination around the time of their births. The sample of siblings is reconstructed from the birth history of women in the Indian National Family Health Survey (2016–2017). Prenatal discrimination is measured by the male to female sex ratio at birth (SRB), computed by backward induction from the Census of India (2011). Results show that the greater the difference between the SRB in the birthyears of sisters and the SRB in the birthyears of brothers, the greater the difference in mortality between sisters and brothers. This finding lends support to the idea that prenatal discrimination legitimized otherwise latent discrimination. Furthermore, the excess female mortality associated with this mechanism is found in rural areas, but not in urban ones, and this relationship is more intense for infant girls born in high parities and therefore more likely to belong to families that did not resort to sex-selective abortions to control family sex-composition. This paper contributes to the problematization of the intertwining dimensions of discrimination, providing a better understanding of the missing women phenomenon

Developmental psychology · Neglect · Population · Psychiatry · Sociology · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Medicine · Psychology