another key contribution by amartya san
is the idea of the missing women but
just let me warn you this is going to
get a little scary
sen has raised the issue of whether baby
and prenatal girls are really receiving
equal treatment and equal care from
their families in some parts of the
world it seems that sons are preferred
and that means when it comes to medical
care and attention maybe the boys are
getting a better deal
let's look at a simple numerical
comparison if we take the united states
there are 1.05 or 1.06 girls to every
boy
if we take china there are
0.94 girls to every boy in other words
the sex ratio is skewed in the united
states and in other wealthier countries
there are more young girls than young
boys but in china it's the other way
around there are more more young boys
than young girls why would this be
sen added up some numbers in a simple
manner and this was how he did the
calculation he asked if countries like
china had a boy to girl ratio that would
be the same as that in the united states
how many more females would there be on
planet earth
based on these mathematics sent came up
with a claim that there could be as many
as a hundred million women missing and
this is why it's called the problem of
the missing women a hypothesis is that
these women are missing because at the
prenatal stage or as baby girls or as
young children perhaps they weren't
given the same care attention and
medical treatment as was received by the
young boys that's a pretty scary thought
i'll get back to those numbers in a
moment but what are some potential
solutions to this problem first is to
improve female education and second is
to improve female employment
opportunities that may improve the
quality of norms in society regarding
the treatment of females
sen showed that in those parts of the
world where female education and
employment are better that this problem
of the missing women tends to be much
weaker or is absent altogether
sen for instance looked at the indian
state of kerala which has a pretty good
educational system a high level of
literacy and a better situation for
women's rights than in many other
developing regions and he found that in
kerala there is not in general this
problem of the missing women these
solutions are in general considered to
be very good ideas
that all said since calculation of the
100 million missing women is considered
to be problematic once we look at the
exact numbers
most scholars agree there's a serious
problem in this area but since basic
calculation assumed that each region has
an identical initial ratio of male to
female births and this simply isn't true
there are some parts of the world where
at birth there are more baby girls than
baby boys and other parts where there
are at birth more baby boys than baby
girls
once we take this difference into
account in the calculation the number of
missing women is not 100 million it's
probably a good deal less
there's a very good piece by anderson
and ray published in 2010 review of
economic studies it's called missing
women age and disease
they show that disease by disease
effects account for most of the missing
women around the world
that is if there are missing women in a
particular region it's probably because
in that region there is some disease to
which women whether they be baby girls
or grown women are more prone so what
they have done in this article is go
through different parts of the world and
show which diseases are giving rise to
the missing women and at what ages these
women are going missing
let's take a look at what they have
learned from this piece
if we look at china this is the case
where sen's argument seems to be most
clearly true most of the missing women
in china are from prenatal factors or
from infancy that is the sex ratio
between girls and boys opens up in china
at a very early age this seems to fit
send scenario of a case where parents
aren't paying enough attention and
giving enough care to the baby girls
compared to the baby boys or there may
be a kind of selective abortion going on
where the parents are keener to have
baby boys than baby girls
but the interesting thing is that only
in china does this seem to be the case
in other regions the problem of the
missing women actually takes a different
form
if we look at india it seems that
cardiovascular disease is actually the
main culprit in the missing women
problem the sex ratio opens up to be
quite large for women at older ages
because of heart disease so it's a very
different story than the one we might
tell about china
if we look at sub-saharan africa the
story about the differing sex ratio it
again seems to be about disease malaria
is one important disease but most of all
hiv aids accounts for the biggest chunk
of the missing women problem in africa
that is there are fewer women but it's
because women typically at older ages
are dying from hiv aids at a higher rate
than the men are so it's not a problem
of children or babies being neglected at
birth it's the differential incidence of
this particular disease
interestingly if you read sen he doesn't
account for there being a missing women
problem in sub-saharan africa at all
it turns out however when we adjust for
the differing sex ratios at birth the
missing women problem is especially
severe in sub-saharan africa it simply
tends to come from hiv aids and to a
lesser extent malaria
what's the upshot it's commonly agreed
that the missing women problem is very
serious sen's number of 100 million
seems to be a considerable exaggeration
but even a much smaller number would be
a very large number indeed
it's interesting that if you go back and
look at history look at the united
states the united states had a missing
women problem in the year 1900 and in
proportional terms it was actually a
more severe problem than either china or
india have today
it's not the common view that american
parents were neglecting their baby girls
in the year 1900 but again it seems it
might have something to do with the
differential incidence of disease
let's consider a quotation from the
anderson and rey paper they say and i
quote
sin's terrible story of inequality and
neglect is possibly true in large part
but other stories need to be told as
well