In this chapter we will combine what we have learned about calculating the numbe
In this chapter we will combine what we have learned about calculating the number of missing females, about fertility, family structure, and even human trafficking. We will focus on son preference and marriage payments. Both of these are heavily influenced by culture and tradition, but economic pressures help explain the origin and continuation of these practices. Both of these practices can result in hardship, even mortality for people identified as girls and women. People identified as boys and men may also be adversely affected.
In earlier chapters we mentioned that girl infants and children may experience unnaturally high mortality rates due to preference for boy children. Figure 24-1 below shows some unusually low and some unusually high sex ratios at birth. If the data can be believed, in 2019 Sichuan province in China had a sex ratio of 97 boys per 100 girls, in contrast to the biological sex ratio of 105-6, while Tianjin had a sex ratio of 123.
Whatever these data say, it is common knowledge that sex ratios at birth, especially for “higher order” children (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th child) tend to be higher in South Asia and East Asia. In contrast to the datum in the Table above, the CIA World Factbook reported the sex ratio at birth for China to have been 111 in 2020, not 105.1.
A 2016 study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal [1] discovered that the sex ratio at birth did not vary much among ethnic groups in Canada, except in the case of Canadian women born in India whose first and second children were female. For that group of women, the sex ratio at birth for the third child was 196:100, more than 80% higher than normal. The greater the number of induced abortions between the second birth (female) and the third birth, the more likely the third child was to be male, indicating that female fetuses were being aborted. An abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy or later was associated with an almost four times greater ratio of baby boys to baby girls than normal.
M. Das Gupta (2009) explains that Korea, China, and northwestern India, places where son preference has manifested itself especially strongly, have traditional political systems which are very much organized around male ancestry. In East Asia, ancestor worship helps reinforce notions of loyalty, order, and political hierarchy, and requires ceremonies carried out by men. Property is typically inherited by men only.
In rural areas of East and Southeast Asia, a rural man’s identity, social status, and access to resources may be determined by his position in a clan, with the oldest son of an oldest son at the top. A woman’s identity is determined by her husband. Women born into the clan are required to leave and marry men of other clans. They leave their land and forego any inheritance other than what is given to them as part of the marriage settlement.
Ding and Zhang (2014) find evidence that, in rural China, having a son has been perceived as a good investment. Using 2003 data on three