| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
|
|
Sen (2003) notes that recent improvements in excess female child mortality have been counterbalanced by “a new female disadvantage—that in natality” (p. 1297). It is not clear, however, the degree to which prenatal and postnatal gender differentials in mortality may be interacting with each other in India. Goodkind (1999) has suggested that it may be unethical to ban sex-selective abortion in part because of the potentially detrimental effect on postnatal female mortality. It may well be that enforcement of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act in the absence of policy initiatives addressing the potential ensuing increases in female postnatal mortality, will have a deleterious effect on the juvenile sex ratio. Goodkind notes that empirical testing of this potential shift from prenatal to postnatal discrimination has been precluded by limitations in the comparative design of recent research and a lack of appropriate data. Nonetheless, using causal modeling of observational data, it is possible to make substantive analytical inferences about policy alternatives with respect to sex-selective abortion using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data (Cole & Hernan, 2002; Pearl, 2001; Robins, Hernan, & Brumback, 2000; Smith, 2003; Winship & Morgan, 1999).