Gender discrimination in

developing countries
ECON 138
Lecture 7.2
Gender disparities in developing
countries

Jayachandran 2015
Gender disparities in developing
countries

Jayachandran 2015
Gender disparities in developing
countries

Jayachandran 2015
 Missing women

Who is a missing woman?

A woman who should be alive but is not

How can we compute this?

Take a ratio of females to males from a set of countries where we don’t believe
discrimination occurs

[Current population X (F/M) Ratio] – Current number of women

Amartya Sen did this using SSA as the ratio, and discovered a serious missing women
problem in S/SE asia: China 44 million, India 37 million
 Missing women

Is the missing women problem simply a problem of development?

- correlate living standards and missing women within a country

- examine trends in sex ratios over time

Missing women
Quick aside: what does missing
women do to marriage markets?
Missing women
 Detecting discrimination

How does one detect discrimination within a household?

If girls eat less than boys, is that evidence of discrimination?

Detecting discrimination

Flato and Kotsadam 2014

 Discrimination begins in the womb:
Evidence of sex selective prenatal investments

Prashant Bharadwaj & Leah K. Nelson

Department of Economics, UCSD
Introduction
Discrimination in prenatal care

•Why examine prenatal care?

• Relatively under-explored channel of sex discrimination
• Large literature on the impact of in utero events on neonatal
survival and overall health
• Early life health is important for later life success
•Discrimination is likely to persist into postnatal care
•Even if sex-selective abortion can be prevented, this channel of
discrimination might persist and have long term impacts

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Methodology and problems
Basic specification

We start with the most basic specification

Carei = β Malei + α Fi + ui

Care: Prenatal care (number of visits, tetanus shots etc)

Male: dummy variable for whether the child was male or not
F: observed covariates (mother’s characteristics, birth order, gender
composition etc)

Under equal treatment we expect β=0.

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Data

• India: 1992, 1998 and 2004 NFHS

• women between the ages of 15-49
• prenatal care information on the youngest child born within 5 years
of survey date
• ultrasound information in 1998 (sub sample) and 2004
• Other countries: various DHS samples
• China: Health and Nutrition Survey (various years)

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Results
Basic specification
Prenatal Tetanus Non-Home
Number of Number of Iron Pills Days Took
All India sample: NFHS Care Shot Delivery
Prenatal Tetanus (1=Yes, Iron
years 1998 & 2004 (1=Yes, (1=Yes, (1=Yes,
visits Shots 0=No) Supplement
0=No) 0=No) 0=No)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Coefficient on Male 0.011** 0.058* 0.011** 0.039*** 0.000 0.349 0.017***

(0.006) (0.030) (0.005) (0.014) (0.006) (0.938) (0.005)
Mean of Dependent
0.688 2.780 0.777 1.680 0.590 39.7 0.312
Variable
Observations 32233 32012 32017 32017 32166 17698 31073
R-squared 0.311 0.477 0.191 0.176 0.242 0.296 0.374

 Gender gap in tetanus immunization accounts for 4-10% of

excess female neonatal mortality
Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego
Results
Basic specification – Northern India

Prenatal Tetanus Non-Home

Northern region Care
Number of
Shot
Number of Iron Pills Days Took
Delivery
states: NFHS years Prenatal Tetanus (1=Yes, Iron
(1=Yes, (1=Yes, (1=Yes,
1998 & 2004 visits Shots 0=No) Supplement
0=No) 0=No) 0=No)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Coefficient on Male 0.028** 0.189*** 0.022* 0.056** 0.004 2.603* 0.038***

(0.011) (0.048) (0.011) (0.027) (0.012) (1.452) (0.009)
Mean of Dependent
0.601 2.122 0.685 1.435 0.488 29.0 0.236
Variable
Observations 8369 8304 8324 8324 8349 4161 8106
R-squared 0.274 0.466 0.182 0.175 0.228 0.291 0.413

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Results
Using ultrasound data
Full Sample Northern Region
At least 2 Antenatal At least 2 Antenatal
Tetanus Shot Tetanus Shot
Visits Visits
1998 and 2004 samples
restricted to mothers who
Ultra No Ultra Ultra No Ultra Ultra No Ultra Ultra No Ultra
have been to antenatal clinic
at least once
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Male 0.530** 0.117* 0.170 0.041 0.692** 0.080 0.938** 0.110
(0.223) (0.061) (0.233) (0.080) (0.299) (0.118) (0.396) (0.153)
Constant 3.184*** 2.388*** 5.517*** 2.292*** 2.226 0.362 5.690*** 1.809**
(1.086) (0.300) (1.137) (0.307) (1.441) (0.575) (1.852) (0.822)
P-value of the test that the
coefficient on Male is the
0.074 0.600 0.057 0.051
same in the with and without
ultrasound samples

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Results
Mother fixed effects

Number of
Prenatal Number of Non-Home
Tetanus Shot Tetanus Iron Pills
Care Prenatal visits Delivery
Shots
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Male 0.022 0.112* 0.031** 0.082** 0.029* 0.004
(0.015) (0.064) (0.015) (0.034) (0.016) (0.013)
Birth Order 0.017 0.209 0.018 0.016 0.032 -0.019
(0.041) (0.181) (0.040) (0.095) (0.043) (0.036)
Existing Sex Ratio of Children 0.020 0.093 -0.017 -0.021 0.006 -0.016
(0.018) (0.084) (0.018) (0.044) (0.021) (0.017)
Mean of Dependent Variable 0.626 2.297 0.715 1.460 0.544 0.267
Number of Mothers 3968 3962 3956 3956 3982 3969

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Results
Other countries
Non-Home
Coefficient on Male in various Prenatal Care Number of Tetanus Shot Number of
Delivery
countries (1=Yes, 0=No) Prenatal visits (1=Yes, 0=No) Tetanus Shots
(1=Yes, 0=No)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
China 0.046* 0.346* na na
(0.027) (0.205)
Bangladesh 0.003 0.076** 0.028*** 0.039* 0.001
(0.009) (0.037) (0.009) (0.021) (0.003)
Pakistan 0.018 0.184* 0.020 0.016 0.006
(0.015) (0.100) (0.016) (0.039) (0.014)
Pakistan (Punjab Region) 0.019 0.268* 0.015 0.014 0.026
(0.021) (0.152) (0.023) (0.056) (0.020)
Sri Lanka 0.002 na 0.010 na 0.014
(0.008) (0.016) (0.014)
Thailand 0.005 na 0.020 na 0.014
(0.017) (0.022) (0.018)
Ghana -0.013** 0.010 0.004 0.003 0.003
(0.006) (0.078) (0.009) (0.024) (0.010)

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Results
Basic specification – previous children female

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Sex-selective abortions

Sex-selective abortions introduces several complications for

interpreting our basic specification:

• Sample selection: what about mothers who choose to abort

female fetuses?
• We only observe women who decide to carry a girl to term
• Women who abort would likely have invested less in girls
anyway
• Leads to an underestimate of the true effect

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Sex selective abortions

• Reverse causality: what if prenatal check-ups cause male births?

• Prenatal check ups  sex determination  females aborted

 positive correlation between male births and prenatal care

• Examine decision to receive additional prenatal care

conditional on having made at least one prenatal visit

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Sex-selective abortions

• Other omitted variables: what if mothers who choose sex-

selective abortion have different preferences/characteristics that
also drive the decisions to use prenatal care?

• Wealth, education, and gender composition of previous

children are highly predictive of who uses abortion

• Use mother fixed effects to get rid of time invariant

characteristics

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Selective recall

What if mothers selectively remember or report prenatal care when

they have a boy?

• Mothers should always selectively remember/report, even for

periods when ultrasound technology was not widespread
• Exploit timing of care to study checkups before fetal gender is
known
•Ultrasound receipt should not matter for results under this
hypothesis

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Fertility stopping rules

Son preference-based fertility stopping rules makes the probability

of the youngest child being male more likely

• Families where a male child is observed are quite different from

families where a female child is observed
• Use the Barcellos et al (2010) method to examine families where
children are “young enough”
• Caveat: this approach assumes the absence of sex selective
abortions

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Estimation Issues
Medical complications

What if male fetuses require more attention from a medical

perspective?

• While male fetuses are more fragile, recommendations regarding

basic prenatal checks do not vary by sex of the fetus
• Have direct data on medical complications during pregnancy

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

Conclusions

• Discrimination in prenatal care is a potential problem

• Mothers in India (particularly in the North) appear to take better
care of male fetuses compared to female fetuses
• Discrimination in tetanus shots can explain between 4-10% of
excess female neonatal mortality
• Abortion laws might not get around this problem

Leah K. Nelson, UC San Diego

 Missing women across different ages

Anderson and Ray 2009

 (non-exhaustive) Causes of gender
discrimination
• Economic causes – under development might result in gender
discrimination
• Returns to physical skill are high when capital is low
• Labor intensive home production
• High and risky fertility
• Cultural norms – patrilocality, old age support, dowry, etc.
Plough vs Hoe agriculture
Plough vs Hoe agriculture
“Horizon” effect of making births less
risky

Jayachandran and Lleras-Muney 2009

“Horizon” effect of making births less
risky

Jayachandran and Lleras-Muney 2009

“Horizon” effect of making births less
risky

Jayachandran and Lleras-Muney 2009

 Old Age Insurance and Son Preference

Need to plan for old age, but there are no markets for old age insurance

Children very often cited as source of old age insurance

But, women have a limited fertile cycle AND infant/child mortality is high

Let the probability that a child grows up to look after you be p

Let q be the threshold probability that you need for old age insurance (that at least
one child takes care of you

How many children (n) do you need such that you reach this threshold?
 Old Age Insurance and Son Preference

Need to plan for old age, but there are no markets for old age insurance

Children very often cited as source of old age insurance

But, women have a limited fertile cycle AND infant/child mortality is high

Let the probability that a child grows up to look after you be p

Let q be the threshold probability that you need for old age insurance (that at least
one child takes care of you

How many children (n) do you need such that you reach this threshold?

1-(1-p)n>q
If p=0.5 and q=0.9, n=4!!
 Women and Political Power
• Women historically under-represented in political office
• Would outcomes be different if women were to hold office?
• How would we study this?
• Can you do a simple comparison?
• Two approaches:
• Use “close” elections between male/female candidates
– Example of a ‘regression discontinuity’
• Use institutional criteria
– Duflo & Chattopadhyay (2004)
– Look at what happens when the post of elected village head in India is
reserved for women
– This happens by rotation – so you have something close to a random lottery
in determining the gender of the village head
– They find greater investment in goods valued by women – such as drinking
water
Women and Political Power

Brollo and Troiano 2012

Does exposure to female politicians matter?

Beaman et al 2014
Unique plight of widows