Sex Selective Abortions, Fertility, and Birth Spacing

Abstract

This paper addresses two main questions: what is the relationship between fertility and sex selection and how does birth spacing interact with the use of sex-selective abortions? I introduce a statistical method that incorporates how sex-selective abortions affect both the likelihood of a son and spacing between births. Using India’s National Family and Health Surveys, I show that falling fertility intensifies use of sex selection, leading to use at lower parities, and longer spacing after a daughter is born. Women with 8 or more years of education, both in urban and rural areas, are the main users of sex-selective abortions and have the lowest fertility. Women with less education have substantially higher fertility and do not appear to use sex selection. Predicted lifetime fertility for high-education women declined more than 10% between 1985-1994, when sex selection was legal, and 1995–2006, when sex selection was illegal. Fertility is now around replacement level. Abortions per woman increased almost 20% for urban women and 50% for rural women between the two periods, suggesting that making sex selection illegal has not reversed its use. Finally, sex selection appears to be used to ensure one son rather than multiple sons.

Keywords: India, pre-natal sex determination, censoring, competing risk

JEL Classification: J1, O12, I1