| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Background and Significance
Indian government officials were disappointed by India’s poor ranking in the 2002 United Nations Development Report—124th of 173 countries—and the report’s criticism of social development issues, focusing particularly on the situation of women and health (Jacob, 2002). The report highlighted the large estimated number of “missing women” in India (Fukuda-Parr, 2002), using the term Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, coined to draw attention to the abnormally high age-specific mortality rates of females in many Asian and North African populations (Sen, 1990).
Recent demographic studies indicate that the overall sex ratio in India is a poor indicator of recent trends in the status of women because it is the accumulation of unequal child mortality over the past century (Griffiths, Matthews, & Hinde, 2000; Guillot, 2002; Mayer, 1999).