India is going through a radical demographic transition, but new data from the Census show that one thing remains the same -- the desire for a male child.
Around 290 million women have had at least one child, the data show, with two being the most common number of children in a family -- a testament to falling fertility rates in India. The drop from number of two-child families to the number of families with more children is much sharper now than it was a decade ago. In fact, there were more families with over six children 10 years ago despite population growth.
Bring in gender dynamics, however, and an extremely >complicated picture emerges . Among families with one to four children, more boys are born than girls. The unnatural advantage for boy babies is particularly sharp among families with two children -- half of such families have one boy and one girl, a third have two boys and just one-sixth have two girls. Even given the slight birth advantage that boys enjoy (in nature, there is a slightly higher likelihood of males being born than females), such sharply skewed sex ratios are a clear indication of unnatural processes, most likely pre-natal sex selection.
Among families with more than four children, a sudden reversal begins to take place, as girls become more common than boys. What’s going on here? Families that are unable to practise sex selection, or choose not to, are likely to continue with more pregnancies in the hope of a male child, demographers explain. So large families are more likely to have more girls, as the desire for a male child is what is spurring the size of the family.
What’s more, it’s clear that as family sizes got smaller over the last decade, these processes have only intensified. The magnitude of disparity between small families with more boys than girls and large families with more girls than boys has sharpened between 2001 and 2011.
As India pushes on ahead with its aim of reducing family sizes, it’s going to need to consider the significant >impact it’s having on gender dynamics .
