| Chapter 2: | Background on Population Sex Ratio |
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Women are precluded from inheritance of land. In the south of India (Dravidian), consanguinity, or cross-cousin marriage, is more common. Women tend to marry within their natal villages and maintain close social and economic ties with their natal family. There is greater status equality between wife-givers and wife-takers, and a woman may marry into a lower caste family.
The north/south dichotomy has been criticized by Caldwell and Caldwell (1990), who consider the appropriate distinction to be between the “heartland of an ancient peasant civilization and its periphery” (p. 11). Rather than a static north/south geographic divide, Berreman (1993) describes an Indo-Aryan “core,” and sociopolitical “periphery.” The dominant Hindu ethos characteristic of the core Indo-Aryan culture includes a strong age and gender hierarchy. This dominant culture spread from the upper Gangetic plain of the northeast, assimilating local languages and cultural practices to varying degrees. Regions that are geographically proximate to the core yet remain peripheral are characterized either by a high concentration of tribal populations or by regions that historically resisted the Indo-Aryan expansion, such as the powerful Magadh kingdom in the present-day state of Bihar, which had strong Buddhist, Jainist, and other sectarian influences.
Female Literacy
Studies of the effects of female literacy in the population and mother’s level of education on excess female child mortality have had conflicting results. Mayer (1999) analyzed secular trends in female literacy and trends in the population sex ratio at the national level in India from 1911 to 1991, finding that as female literacy increased, the relative number of females decreased.