考研阅读精选：女儿的报答
The daughter’s returnA glimmer of hope in the sad tale of sex-selective abortion in India
Dec 31st 2011 | from the print edition
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THE march of sex-selective abortion in Asia seems relentless. Not everysociety adopts the practice, but those that do—and they include the twolargest countries on earth—have seen it spread through every socialgroup, unhampered by growing wealth. Indeed, middle-income couples seemmore willing and better able to manipulate the sex of their childrenthan are the poor. And they are more likely to want smaller families,increasing the premium on sons in countries where males are seen as morevaluable.
As a result, richer areas have more sex selectionthan poorer ones and sex selection tends to rise as countries getricher. In China the sex ratio at birth is much more distorted in richShanghai and Guangzhou than in poor Tibet. From 2001-11, India’s GDPmore than doubled and the census of 2011 found only 914 girls aged 0-6for every 1,000 boys, worse even than the abysmal tally in 2001, whenthere were 927 girls per 1,000 boys. (India counts the sex ratiodifferently from the rest of the world, which expresses the idea as thenumber of boys per 100 girls; using the international measure, India’schild sex ratio rose from 108 in 2001 to 109.5 in 2011.) In 2001 Indiahad 6m fewer girls than boys aged 0-6; by 2011 the number had risen to7m.
It has long been assumed the process of reversing sexselection does not happen until countries are richer than India or Chinaare now. One of the few to have succeeded in ending the practice isSouth Korea, where the sex ratio at birth peaked in 1990 and has sincefallen to near-normal levels. South Korea did not manage fully toreverse the trend until its GDP per person had reached about $12,000.China’s is now $8,400, India’s $3,700. Both countries have beencampaigning against sex-selective abortion for years, making it illegalto terminate pregnancies just because parents want a son (or indeed toinform parents of the sex of a fetus), launching “save the daughter”campaigns, and—in India’s case—enlisting Bollywood stars to sing thepraises of girls. All, it seems, to no avail.
Now, however,comes evidence that India may in fact be succeeding. In a pair ofarticles in the Indian Express, Surjit Bhalla, an economist, andRavinder Kaur, a sociologist, use a different set of figures to get adifferent result. On the basis of the national sample surveys (NSS),they calculate that India’s sex ratio at birth swung from 924 femalesper 1,000 males in 2004-05 to 977 in 2011, a stunning turnaround infavour of girls.
The NSS figure is not comparable to thecensus. It shows the sex ratio at birth, whereas the census shows theratio for children aged 0-6 (census figures for the sex ratio at birthhave not been published). But there are reasons for thinking the NSS isreliable. The sample size, of 125,000 households, is large. And when theNSS does produce figures comparable to the census, they closely matchit (for example, the NSS and census figures for the child sex ratio in2001 and 2011 are almost identical). The new figure represents a verybig change. A sex ratio of 977 girls to 1,000 boys is closer to whatprevailed in the 1960s than it is to more recent decades.
Soit is possible that the sex ratio has begun to change recently in waysnot captured by the census. If so, why? Mr Bhalla and Ms Kaur pin theexplanation squarely on the behaviour of parts of India’s middle class.What they call the mature middle class, those with an annual income of170,000 rupees ($3,200) for a family of five, no longer practises sexselection. Ms Kaur’s research in five Indian states finds that richermiddle-class families are no longer using sons as vehicles for upwardmobility. A combination of female education, the spread of “modern”social attitudes through television, government policies and a dawningsense that daughters are more likely than sons to look after parents inold age are all having a cumulative effect. This is persuading thericher parts of the middle class that girls are as valuable as boys. Theauthors reckon this slice of the population has almost doubled in sizein six years, from 27% in 2005 to 50% in 2011, so its preferencesexplain the change in the figures.
The argument might seem tocontradict the view that sex selection rises as people get richer. Infact, at slightly lower levels of income, the link is as strong as ever.Mr Bhalla and Ms Kaur find sex selection has run rampant among whatthey call the emerging middle classes—those with an income of90,000-170,000 rupees a year. But since this group has declined as ashare of the population, from 68% in 2000 to 41% now, their preferenceshave a smaller impact.
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