Almost 20 years ago, Amartya Sen, in the New York Review of Books, explained how to calculate the number of “missing women” in a given country: determine the number of surplus women who should be alive in, for example, China – if China had the same ratio of men to women as do countries that provide comparable health care to both sexes. According to Sen’s math, there were more than 50 million missing women in China alone; added to the missing women in South Asia, West Asia, and North Africa, that number jumped to 100 million. “These numbers,” Sen wrote, “tell us, quietly, a terrible story of inequality and neglect leading to the excess mortality of women.” While Sen’s theory did not go unchallenged (see links at end of this post), the numbers are startling. And in 2005, the UN doubled the estimate, to 200 million. Last month the Toronto Star profiled the work of two economists who have gone a long way toward answering a simple but important question: What’s happening?
Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray analyzed figures from the year 2000 from sub-Saharan Africa, China, and India, to better understand at what age the missing women are dying, and what they’re dying from. As they explain in their paper, Missing Women: Age and Disease, “The possibility of gender bias at birth and the mistreatment of young girls are widely regarded as key explanations. . . . While we do not dispute the existence of severe gender bias at young ages, our computations yield some striking new findings.”
Their news? Anderson and Ray found that the majority of missing women died as adults (older than 15), not from sex selection in utero or childhood gender bias, as previously thought. The authors’ suggested percentages of “excess female deaths” occurring later in life are striking: 66 percent in India, 55 percent in China, and 83 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.
In China and India, many of these deaths are attributed to “injuries”-a term unsettling in its vagueness. In the Star article, Anderson says that the majority of China’s 141,000 excess female deaths from “injuries” were the result of suicide, usually by ingesting crop pesticides.
“Injuries” in India accounted for the deaths of 86,000 women ages 15 to 29. Here the researchers suspect dowry-related deaths, which can include “bride burnings”- a particularly brutal form of violence in which a woman is doused with kerosene and lit on fire.
The largest number of missing women is in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than one-third died of HIV/AIDS. Other factors here may also include lack of access to care and other psychosocial factors.
Two decades ago, Sen wrote that “[i]f this situation is to be corrected by political action and public policy, the reasons why there are so many ‘missing women’ must first be understood.” Anderson and Ray’s work now brings us closer to that understanding-and makes all too clear the ultimate toll gender discrimination can take on a woman’s life.
For more reading:
Economist Emily Oster’s challenge of Sen’s theory in 2005: “Hepatitis B and the Case of the Missing Women” (arguing that biology, and not gender discrimination, skewed the ratios in Asia)
Monica Das Gupta’s response to Oster’s controversial claim: “Explaining Asia’s Missing Women: A New Look at the Data” (families whose first-born was a daughter later had sons, suggesting measures to ensure boys)
A 2008 report that the effect of HBV on sex ratio imbalance was insignificant: “Can Hepatitis B Mothers Account for the Number of Missing Women: Evidence from Three Million Newborns in Taiwan”
Oster re-examines the data and issues a 2008 retraction: “Hepatitis B Does Not Explain Male-Biased Sex Ratios in China”
Authors suggest that legalization of abortion accounted for an increase in sex ratio at birth in the 1980s-and a decrease in excess female mortality: “More Missing Women, Fewer Girls Dying: The Impact of Abortion on Sex Ratios at Birth and Excess Female Mortality”
Paper concludes that increasing female income-and holding male income constant-increases girls’ survival rates: “Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Income on Sex Imbalances”
Last month, the New York Times published a piece on the surprising birth bias for boys found in some Asian American communities: “U.S. Births Hint at Bias for Boys in Some Asians“
It’s a nice article. This trouble is not new to China but is haunting the country from the beginning of the tang dynasty.Forced marriage, abiding threats of deportation and a life without citizenship have become the norm for most female defectors living in China, according to “Lives for Sale,” based on the research of Lee Hae-young, a Seoul-based human-rights researcher.