Are predominantly Muslim societies distinctly disadvantaged in democratization? If so, why? The article presents a straightforward cross-national examination of the link between Islam and political regime. The evidence strongly suggests that Muslim countries are in fact democratic underachievers. The nature of the causal connection between Islam and political regime is investigated. Many conventional assumptions about Islam and politics do not withstand scrutiny. But one factor does help explain the dearth of democracy in the Muslim world: the treatment of women and girls. The rudiments of a provisional theory linking the treatment of females and regime type are offered and the implications of the findings for democracy, both in Muslim societies and elsewhere, are discussed.

Islam and Authoritarianism

In this article the causes and implications of the recent reported sex ratio increase after the 1980s in China are analyzed. The sex ratio ought to have been 106 male/100 female births in the absence of social and behavioral interference. However the increase began in 1981 at 108.5 and is currently 113.8 (1989). The reported sex ratios for 0-4 years increased similarly; the ratios increased with increased parity. At parity of 4 or more the sex ratio in 1989 was 131.7. Hull says the possible causes are female infanticide prenatal sex identification followed by gender-specific induced abortion and underreporting of births. Johansson and Hygren suggest that about 50% of the "missing" girls were unreported births of adopted children and sex selected abortions but the primary cause was excess female infant mortality. The authors attribute the causes to underreporting of female births an increase in sex selected abortion and a very low incidence of female infanticide. Each cause is discussed in detail. A reverse survival method is used to calculate that underreporting was 2.26% for male births and 5.94% for female births. The corrected sex ratio at birth for 1989 and the first half of 1990 was estimated at 111.4 rather than 115.4. Correction of the 10% tabulation for 1989 was 109.8 rather than 113.8. The difference amounted to 5.13% for the 10% tabulation and 42.6% for the 1% sample data. The differences between the reported and estimated sex ratios for the 0-4 group in 1982 were relatively minor.

Causes and implications of the recent increase in the reported sex ratio at birth in China.

This paper examines the relationship between consumption smoothing and excess female mortality, by asking if favorable rainfall shocks in childhood increase the survival probabilities of girls to a greater extent than they increase boys' survival probabilities for a sample of rural Indian children. In order to avert the issue of selection bias due to underreporting of births of girls, a methodology is employed that does not require data on births by gender. The results indicate that favorable rainfall shocks increase the ratio of the probability that a girl survives to the probability that a boy survives.

/pdf/consumption-smoothing-and-excess-female-mortality-in-rural-29zmyjq2k5.pdf

Consumption Smoothing and Excess Female Mortality in Rural India

Although the effect of son preference on sex composition of children ever born is undetectable in national-level estimates that aggregate across all families, this article provides empirical evidence from India that son preference has two pronounced and predictable family-level effects on the sex composition of children ever born. First, data from India show that smaller families have a significantly higher proportion of sons than larger families. Second, socially and economically disadvantaged couples and couples from the northern region of India not only want but also attain a higher proportion of sons, if the effects of family size are controlled.

Son preference and sex composition of children: Evidence from india

This paper seeks to explain the dearth of females in the population of China in cohorts born from the late 1930s to the present. We demonstrate that in virtually all cohorts. the shortage of females in comparison with males is revealed when the cohort is first enumerated in a census. Subsequently it barely changes, an indication that female losses occur very early in life. Using the high-quality data from the censuses and fertility surveys in China, we show that many of the births of the girls missing in the censuses were not reported in the surveys because they died very young. The incidence of excess early female mortality (probably infanticide) declined precipitously in the Communist period, but not to zero. The recent escalation in the proportion of young females missing in China has been caused largely by rapidly escalating sex-selective abortion.

/pdf/five-decades-of-missing-females-in-china-15lnlr2gtx.pdf

Five decades of missing females in China

This account of the missing girls in Chinas high sex ratios verifies Hulls analysis and 1) assumes 105-106 boys per 100 girls as evidenced by 240 years of Swedish demographic data 2) verifies the sex ratio for reported second and higher parity births bases on the 2 per thousand fertility survey (SFPC2) in 1988 3) introduces adopted children data from SFPC2 which accounts for 50% of the missing girls and 4) calculates excess female infant deaths based on international demographic data for 130 boys per 100 girls as the expected ratio. The Swedish sex ratio data does not vary significantly between regions by parity or age of mother or by big differences due to race or socioeconomic circumstances and may only be indirectly influenced by these factors in utero as miscarriage or stillbirth. The Swedish data were found comparable to 12 Western industrialized countries 1974-84. It is expected that the larger the cohort the smaller the variation is sex ratios annually such that the Chinese data with 200 times larger cohorts should fall within the narrow range of 105-6 boys per 100 girls of all live births registered. Racial differences between Caucasians and Chinese are not expected because in the 1953 census the sex ratio among infant 500000 in 1987. Using the adoption figures in calculating the sex ratio a closer approximation is obtained. The sex ratio of 114 for infant deaths compared to the 130 average would indicate differential neglect of infant girls or 4 per 1000 excess female infant deaths per live girl births.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1972351.pdf

Ola Nygren

Papers

The missing girls of China: a new demographic account.