Prenatal sex selection

This study aims to examine the trends in social and geographical variations in SRB in Korea. .The data was taken from “Vital Statistics Birth” for the period from 1981 to 2005. We computed the annual male proportion of live births according to mother’s education, mother’s occupation and geography, demonstrating three year moving average. Logistic regression analysis was employed to estimate the odds ratios of male birth according to social and residential groups. SRB in Korea was more prominent in higher social groups and Seoul dwellers until the early 1980’s, but the ratio reversed to be higher in the less educated, manual-job, and country-living mothers since the late 1980’s. The socioeconomic and geographical gap in SRB was most notable in the early 1990s when the SRB in the country was at its peak, and from the late 1990s onwards, the gap has since narrowed. This unique South Korean phenomenon of a social and geographical reversal pattern in SRB supports the diffusion theory of people adopting medical technology for sex selective abortion, suggesting a model to predict the future trends in countries exhibiting an imbalance in SRB.

Despite impressive fertility decline and drastic increase in gender ratio (male to female), little attention has been given to understand the relationship between these two aspects of reproductive behaviour in India. Using unit level data from three waves of Demographic Health Survey (National Family Health Survey), the present study tries to unfold the relationship between fertility pattern and birth masculinity. The analysis reveals that son preference is embedded in Indian family system as efficient family limitation behaviour, though its manifestation varies with stages of fertility transition as well as its regional variations.

Key words: birth masculinity, fertility, parity progression ratio, sex ratio at birth, latent variable model, bivariate LISA, etc.

JEL Classification: J13, J16, C12, C31, Z13, etc

This paper aims to explore SRB of migrants in Italy in order to shed light on the phenomenon of sex selection at birth and to help to address policies against that practice. Recent studies addressed the same issue for migrants or Indian and Chinese origin living in Italy (Meldolesi 2012; Blangiardo and Rimoldi 2012). Our objective is to go beyond these previous studies, analyzing births from mothers with a foreign background from countries where sex selection at birth is widespread and that are among the largest immigrant communities in Italy, including Albania and Montenegro, China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Data stems from the Survey on births from the Resident Population Registers and from the First Regional Survey on Sexual and Reproductive Health of Migrant Women held in Lombardy in 2010. Average SRB will be calculated for the period 1999-2011 by birthplace of mother. We will analyze births of first, second and third order. A comparison with SRB in the origin countries will be provided. Using a multilevel approach the relation among SRB of children and the mothers’ eventual experience of abortion will be explored.

The use of sex-selection technology is currently outlawed in Australia. The national ‘Ethical guidelines on the use of assisted reproductive technology in clinical practice and research’ (NHMRC 2004) state that ‘sex selection (by whatever means) must not be undertaken except to reduce the risk of transmission of a serious genetic condition’. Recent analysis of a large-scale representative survey found that 69 per cent of Australians disapprove or strongly disapprove of IVF for sex selection, and 80 per cent disapprove or strongly disapprove of sex-selective abortion (Kippen, Evans and Gray 2011).
These attitudes sit in tension with Australian preferences for sons and daughters shown in behaviour and attitudes. Australian parents are 25 per cent more likely to have a third child if their first two children are both boys or girls, as opposed to one of each, indicating that parents are ‘trying again’ to gain a child of the missing sex. Extra propensity is also seen in the progression to a fourth child if existing children are all of the same sex (Kippen, Evans and Gray 2007). These findings highlight the preference for at least one son and one daughter by Australian parents.
This paper uses data from a national attitude survey to investigates sex preferences in Australia for a hypothetical first born child and only child.

Despite a wide range of studies on determinants of increased sex ratio of population in Asia, little attention has been given to the role of the stopping rule in human fertility. This paper explores the hypothesis that the stopping rule has an impact on the sex ratio of last births (SRLB). We have used a new method to quantify such impact and to estimate the SRLB. This method includes a model to measure the parity stop ratios (PSR) at the male and the female last births. The hypothesis is tested using data from latest Nepal demographic health survey. The results of the model clearly present a huge impact of differential in stopping rule behaviour on sex ratio at birth. When we consider normal SRB 105, the estimates of sex ratio at last births are varying between SRB 120 to 108 across the different parities. However, we consider, differential in stopping rule in human fertility model, the sex ratio at last births are highly skewed towards male children which varying between SRB 309 to 127 across the different parities.

Education tends to influence every aspect of an individual’s demographic behaviour and outcomes including sex preferences for children. The subject of sex preference has been studied in diverse cultures because of its potential negative social and demographic consequences. This paper investigates the relationship between one’s educational level and sex preferences for children using data from the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Chi-square tests and binary logistic regressions were used to test for significant relationships between characteristics of individuals and preferred sex of a child. Sex preference increases at higher levels of education. Individuals in primary, middle, secondary and higher education had a more likelihood for preference for a sex of a child. Similarly, preference for a son also increases (OR) = 3%, 10.5% and 30%, for middle, secondary and the highly educated but there was less likelihood for a daughter preference among primary and secondary educated individuals (OR = 8.8% and 9.1% times). Education therefore does not necessarily neutralise sex preferences. The expectation that there would be no sex preference did not prove true hence the issue should not be addressed from an educational perspective but rather from a cultural point of view.

The paper outlines the nature of prenatal sex selection in India links this with the future of union formation in India as well as the upcoming changes in the familial and societal fronts, especially from the gender perspective. Prenatal sex selection is an upper class phenomenon in the Indian society. This, combined with rapid demographic transition in most of the Indian states directly hit the supply of brides in the marriage market. For the Indian society, feasibility of formation of marital union will become a serious challenge as the imbalance of sexes is obvious. Given the nature of sex discrimination and hypergamic marriage system in India, unions will be formed with wide class differentials in which improved status of women cannot be expected even though the forthcoming squeeze is favouring females. Following lesser number of women, their role as care giver will be in demand which may ultimately intimidate the universality of marriage in the Indian society. Moreover, prenatal sex selection will affect the male population disproportionately bringing about more violence against women. Inter-regional marriage may become more prominent as there is a clear regional divide on the pattern of sex ratio.

The sex ratio in India has been historically negative or in other words unfavorable to females. Particularly, the sex ratio in juvenile ages i.e. girls in the age group 0-6 years per 1000 boys is worsened. If there is more son preference then the percentage of male children should show a declining trend as number of children increases. This may be more pronounced in case of females who have completed their fertility. In this light, although this study is inspired from the worrying facts of continuously strengthening tendency towards discrimination against women through integration of prevailing traditional gender biased norms and modern technology, but the effort is to understand the extent to which the son preference is prevalent in India and its states. The National Family Health Survey has collected data on the complete birth history of women who are in the reproductive age group i.e. 15-49 years at the time of survey. The data have also been collected on the ‘sex’ of each child. From this data, sex of the child at any given parity and number of children produced by a women can be easily identified. This data has been analyzed to study the proportion of male children for women giving a specified number of children. Ever married women whose ages were more than 35 years on the survey date are considered for the analysis.

When prenatal sex-selection practices in neighboring countries like India and China were the subject of much research and concern, Pakistan was still experiencing high fertility rates. Over the last decade fertility rates have declined, with current fertility projected to be around 3.7 births per woman. Unwanted fertility is declining, especially for educated and wealthy women in urban areas. Unfortunately, this decline has not been accompanied by a decline in gender inequality. Girls continue to lag behind in schooling and health outcomes, and women are still largely seen as social and economic burdens on families. As women get closer to achieving their desired family size and strong son preference prevails, Pakistan’s vulnerability to skewed sex ratios increases. This is especially likely given the increase in the availability of prenatal screening technology and the results of abortion studies conducted in the last decade that point to a higher than expected prevalence of induced abortions. This paper aims to assess the prevalence of prenatal sex-selection in Pakistan, as measured by sex ratios at birth, by analyzing birth history data from the demographic and health survey. Changes and differentials in sex ratios at birth can provide a reliable indication of the prevalence of this phenomenon.

This study is an attempt to add information to the larger debate of using the principle of ‘demand and supply’ as means to relate the subtleties of declining sex ratio and women status. This study assessed data of the sex ratio and gender inequality index of 142 countries and Indian case. In the global context, the results reveal that declining sex ratio does not necessarily lead to increase in demand for women. However, if countries are bifurcated by developed and developing, the results fosters contradictory findings: in developed countries skewed sex ratio does not show any association with women status but in developing countries, the women status is decreasing with increasing in male skewed sex ratio. In the India context, it takes the path of developing countries. The skewed sex ratio in India has strong positive association with lower women autonomy. Crime against women is on rise with the worsening trends in sex ratio at birth. Based on the empirical evidence, we hypothesis that the increasing skewed sex ratios or scarcity will increase the demand for women does not hold much truth in developed countries. In Contrast, in developing countries, especially like India, the women status decreases with increasing sex ratio.