Sex-selective abortions and fatal neglect of young girls
| dc.contributor.author | Echavarri, Rebeca | |
| dc.contributor.department | Economía | es_ES |
| dc.contributor.department | Ekonomia | eu |
| dc.contributor.department | Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE | en |
| dc.contributor.funder | Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-01-23T09:14:40Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-01-23T09:14:40Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-12-31 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2025-01-23T09:05:32Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | 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. | en |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Open Access funding provided by Universidad Pública de Navarra thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Rebeca Echavarri acknowledges financial support from the Grant PID2020-115183RB-C21 and PID2021-127119NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI//https://doi.org/10.13039/501100 and by "ERDF A way of making Europe". | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Echavarri, R. (2025). Sex-selective abortions and fatal neglect of young girls. Population Research and Policy Review, 44(1), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-024-09920-4. | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.1007/s11113-024-09920-4 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 0167-5923 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/53061 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher | Springer | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | Population Research and Policy Review (2025), vol. 44, núm. 5 | |
| dc.relation.projectID | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020/PID2020-115183RB-C21/ES/ | |
| dc.relation.projectID | info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2021-2023/PID2021-127119NB-I00/ES/ | |
| dc.relation.publisherversion | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-024-09920-4 | |
| dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. | |
| dc.rights.accessRights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | Child development | en |
| dc.subject | Sex ratio at birth | en |
| dc.subject | Excess female mortality | en |
| dc.title | Sex-selective abortions and fatal neglect of young girls | en |
| dc.type | info:eu-repo/semantics/article | |
| dc.type.version | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion | |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication | dcef902d-e6ec-4c03-807c-f6155967cc25 | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery | dcef902d-e6ec-4c03-807c-f6155967cc25 |