Is there an incipient turnaround in Asia's"missing girls"phenomenon ?

Monica Das Gupta (), Woojin Chung and Li Shuzhuo

No 4846, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: The apparently inexorable rise in the proportion of"missing girls"in much of East and South Asia has attracted much attention amongst researchers and policy-makers. An encouraging trend was suggested by the case of South Korea, where child sex ratios were the highest in Asia but peaked in the mid-1990s and normalized thereafter. Using census data, we examine whether similar trends have begun to manifest themselves in the two large populous countries of this region, China and India. The data indicate that child sex ratios are peaking in these countries, and in many sub-national regions are beginning to trend towards less masculinization. This suggests that, with continuing vigorous efforts to reduce son preference, the"missing girls"phenomenon could be addressed in Asia.

Keywords: Population Policies; Gender and Law; Gender and Health; Adolescent Health; Disease Control&Prevention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-cwa, nep-dev and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4846

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