| Chapter 2: | Background on Population Sex Ratio |
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On average women reported that their ideal family composition consisted of one to two sons and zero to one daughter. The lowest mortality rate was found among boys with no older brothers, whereas boys with one or more older brothers had a child mortality rate slightly higher than that of first-born girls. These patterns suggest that family-building strategies lead parents to differentially allocate environmental and care inputs to their sons and daughters according to their position in and importance to the family. This pattern was even more pronounced among the younger mothers, where daughters with an older sister had 71% higher child mortality, a surprising finding at the time given that the younger women had much higher levels of education and that their overall child mortality levels were substantially lower. This finding was attributed to the smaller family size among the younger, more educated women who are under greater pressure to limit their family to a single daughter, so they can still have the desired one to two sons. Das Gupta points out that educated women are better able to control both fertility and mortality and are thus better able to match their achieved and desired family sex composition by selectively allocating care to the wanted children. Examination by socioeconomic status showed that overall child mortality varied by land ownership, but the pattern of selective neglect did not. Second-born daughters of both landed and landless parents had 50% higher mortality than other children.
Several studies have found that the beneficial effect of female labor force participation on gender differentials in child mortality is magnified in the northern regions, where the cultural context is less favorable to women (Agnihotri, Palmer-Jones, & Parikh, 2002; Kishor, 1993).