How Many More Missing Women? Excess Female Mortality and Prenatal Sex Selection, 1970–2050

Abstract

Sex‐based discrimination has resulted in severe demographic imbalances between males and females, culminating in a large number of “missing women” in several countries around the world. We provide new estimates and projections of the number of missing females and of the roles played by prenatal and postnatal factors in this imbalance. We estimate time series of the number of missing females, the number of excess female deaths, and the number of missing female births for the world and selected countries. Estimates are provided for 1970–2010 and projections are made from 2010 to 2050. We show that the estimates of these different indicators are consistent with one another and account for the dynamics of the population of missing females over time. We conclude that the number of missing females has steadily risen in the past decades, reaching 126 million in 2010, and the number is expected to peak at 150 million in 2035. Excess mortality was the dominant cause of missing females in the past, and this is expected to remain the case in future decades in spite of the recent rise of prenatal sex selection. The annual number of newly missing females reached 3.4 million in 2010 and is expected to remain above 3 million every year until 2050.

Socioeconomic and gender inequalities in neonatal, postneonatal and child mortality in India: a repeated cross-sectional study, 2005–2016

“…We further only estimate sex differences in mortality while sex-selective abortion is an increasingly prominent concern, contributing to skewed sex ratios. However, excess in female mortality remains the most prominent cause of skewed sex ratios 30. Finally, the excess female mortality may be greater than indicated by sex differences in mortality outcomes since boys generally have higher mortality in a low-income setting due to biological frailty 34–36.…”

Patrilineality, Son Preference, and Sex Selection in South Korea and Vietnam

“…In the case of the 1999 population of Vietnam, the 3 percent sample used to calculate provincial sex ratios at birth is too small to be reliable (birth samples were, on average, around 600). See Guilmoto 2015. 17 Figures for 2013 are representative of those throughout the 2000s, with male infants and children under age 5 dying at higher rates than females (GSO 2013).…”

On the masculinization of population: The contribution of demographic development -- A look at sex ratios in Sweden over 250 years

“…This trend appears to contradict the fact that women live longer, and should therefore outnumber men. Although gender-based discriminatory practices largely explain this paradox at the world level and in some world regions (Sen 1990;Bongaarts and Guilmoto 2015), demographic development also plays a role. This short paper investigates this paradox using data for Sweden from the Human Mortality Database that covers 250 years of mortality and population development.…”