Girl Child: An Inferior Good in India

Abstract

The term Sex ratio is defined “as the number of females per 1000 males in the population†(Census, 2001). It is an important social indicator to measure the extent of prevailing equity between males and females in a society at a given point of time. It is mainly the outcome of the interplay of sex differentials in mortality, sex selective migration, sex ratio at birth and at times the sex differential in population enumeration (Census, 2001). The sex ratio is an important indicator of women’s status in society. We examine whether a girl child is an “inferior†good, in that it has a negative income elasticity of demand. If that is so, the chance of a girl child being actually born would be lower than that for a male child for relatively well off households, even though the children actually born might then go on to receive equal human capital endowments.