Title:
MAGNITUDE OF "MISSING GIRLS" IN INDIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Authors:
Darshy Saran, Indrani Roy Chowdhury, Lekha Chakraborty

Volume - 2 Issue - 9, Pages - 4452-4466

Abstract:
Amartya Sen raised the issue of "missing women" concept when he estimated that the number of "missing women" in the world has exceeded 100 million. He referred to the number of females who had died as a result of unequal access to resources in parts of the developing world. Sen's crude estimate highlighted the importance of the issue and paved way for many demographers to provide serious quantitative estimates of "missing women". This paper provides the estimates of "missing girls" across fifteen major states of India using recent 2011 Census data for three age categories-- birth, infancy and under-five age group. Our estimates suggest that in India a total of 1.80 million girls went missing by the age of five, out of which 0.59 million girls could never get a chance to be born. These estimates reveal the existence of severe gender bias at birth and young ages in India. Our results also show that 0.23 million girls in infancy stage died as a result of post natal gender discrimination. Statewise disaggregation shows that the bigger States such as UP, MP and Bihar together with three northwestern States -- Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab have enormously contributed to the number of missing girls in all the three age groups in 2011.

Cite this Article:

[Saran, Darshy, et al. "MAGNITUDE OF 'MISSING GIRLS' IN INDIA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS." International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research, vol. 2, no. 9, 2017, pp. 4452-4466. September.]