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

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.Female Disadvantage, Mortality, Son Preference, India

A Multinomial Model of Fertility Choice and Offspring Sex-Ratios in India

Fertility decline in developing countries may have unexpected demographic consequences. Although lower fertility improves nutrition, health, and human capital investments for surviving children, little is known about the relationship between fertility outcomes and female-male offspring sex-ratios. Particularly in countries with a cultural preference for sons, like India and China, fertility decline may deteriorate the already imbalanced sex-ratios. We use the fertility histories of over 90,000 Indian women in the Second National Family and Health Survey to investigate the relationship between fertility choices and offspring sex-ratios in India. Both within- and between-family-size differences in offspring sex-ratios are examined. Our analysis reveals three main findings. First, within-family-size differences show that for our reference household (i.e. non-low-caste Hindus), parental education reduces anti-female bias in survival in large families (three or more children households) but plays no role in small families (one or two children households). While a higher standard of living worsens anti-female bias in survival in both large and small families, it does so to a greater extent in small families. Small families that own land also have lower offspring sex-ratios compared to landless households. Second, between-family-size differences indicate an `intensification' effect, whereby small families have dramatically lower offspring sex-ratios than large families. The intensification effect is greatest for Sikh and non-low-caste Hindu households, followed by low-caste Hindu and Christian households, but does not exist for Muslims. Third, while maternal education and urban residence weaken the intensification effect, paternal education, a higher standard of living, and land ownership strengthen it. Our results suggest that fertility decline, together with economic growth, may worsen India's already imbalanced sex-ratios. Thus, much needed fertility control policies must be supplemented with programs that counter offspring sex-selection in favor of sons. Policies that seek to eradicate son preference by making daughters more economically attractive to parents as well as those that imbibe more gender-equal attitudes within individuals are critically needed as economic growth generates higher levels of education and wealth in India.Female Disadvantage, Mortality, Son Preference, Fertility, India

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

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, is 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.

The Role of Social Norms in Child Labor and Schooling in India

This paper aims to summarize the unexplained propensity of children to engage in work, school, or neither. After controlling for a wide range of determinants of child labor, schooling, and idleness, we estimate a hierarchical model that allows for heteroskedastic, spatially correlated random effects. We use the posterior distribution of ranks of random effects to capture social norms toward children’s activities in each district and thus identify those Indian districts where social attitudes favor education and oppose child labor and idleness. We propose that government intervention be targeted at districts with pro-schooling, anti-child-labor, and anti-idleness social attitudes if limited government resources necessitate implementing minimal cost policies that have the greatest potential to succeed.Child Labor, Education, Spatial Dependence, Social Norms, India

Industrial Deregulation, Skill Upgrading, and Wage Inequality in India

We investigate the relationship between economic deregulation (delicensing), skill upgrading, and wage inequality during the 1980s and 1990s in India. We use a unique dataset on India's industrial licensing regime to test whether industrial deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s played a role in generating demand for skilled workers, as measured by the employment and wagebill shares of white-collar workers, and in raising the returns to skilled labor, as measured by the skill premium. Our analysis focuses not only on the difference between licensed and delicensed industries but also on the comparison of these differences during the 1980s, when India's external sector remained relatively closed to the world economy, and the 1990s, when India underwent massive liberalization reforms and became increasingly integrated with the global economy. We identify two main channels through which industrial delicensing affects the demand for skills and wage inequality: capital- and output-skill complementarities. Our analysis finds two important results. First, capital- and output-skill complementarities existed for firms in both licensed and delicensed industries but were stronger in delicensed industries both before and after 1991. The exception is output-skill complementarities with respect to the skill premium, where delicensed industries experienced lower output-skill complementarities compared to licensed ones both before and after 1991. Second, the contribution of industrial delicensing to both types of complementarities was considerably higher during the 1980s and much smaller after 1991. These results suggest that industrial delicensing benefited skilled labor via capital- and output-skill complementarities during the 1980s, the decade before India liberalized it's trade and investment regime. Thus, much of the increase in the demand for and returns to skill as a result of capital- and output-skill complementarities can be attributed to domestic reforms during the pre-1991 period in India.Capital-skill complementarities, industrial delicensing, trade liberalization, India

full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. India’s missing women: disentangling cultural, political and

economic variables

Returns to Education, Child Labor, & Schooling in India

In an environment where children's time has an economic value and employment opportunities for educated workers are scarce, parental investments in their children's education may not be driven entirely by poverty and credit constraints. We offer evidence that children's participation in child labor and schooling responds to economic returns to education in India, which suggests implementing policies that raise the economic benefits of education - such as creating more high-skilled jobs and improving the quality of education - in order to lower child labor and increase schooling.Child Labor, Education, Returns to Education, Skill Premium, India

The Role of Social Norms in Child Labor and Schooling in India

This paper aims to summarize the unexplained propensity of children to engage in work, school, or neither. After controlling for a wide range of determinants of child labor, schooling, and idleness, we estimate a hierarchical model that allows for heteroskedastic, spatially correlated random effects. We use the posterior distribution of ranks of random effects to capture social norms toward children’s activities in each district and thus identify those Indian districts where social attitudes favor education and oppose child labor and idleness. We propose that government intervention be targeted at districts with pro-schooling, anti-child-labor, and anti-idleness social attitudes if limited government resources necessitate implementing minimal cost policies that have the greatest potential to succeed

Exploring the Spatial Determinants of Children’s Activities: Evidence from India

This paper investigates the choice of children's activities in India and provides recommendations for areas where policy intervention to promote schooling and combat child labor would be most successful. First, we recognize that child schooling and labor are not the only activities that children can engage in and include idleness as one of the choices. Second, we use a hierarchical model with spatially correlated random effects to analyze the determinants of the choice of children's activities. Lastly, we recommend that pro-schooling intervention be implemented in districts with favorable attitudes towards schooling and unfavorable attitudes towards idleness, while anti-child-labor interventions be implemented in districts where attitudes towards child labor are less favorable. We thus identify two groups of Indian districts to target appropriate government interventions