Gender-Role Attitudes, Birth Intervals and Sex Selection in India

Artemisa Flores Martinez, University of Warwick

Using survey data (NFHS-3) this paper assesses the factors affecting the probability of having a girl as the first child in Delhi as well as those determining the duration from marriage to first birth using competing risk models. The emphasis is put on a variable measuring the level of modernity / equity in women’s gender attitudes. Delhi was chosen as it is one of the states where the sex ratio at birth has significantly less females than the natural sex ratio. The paper finds that having more modern / egalitarian views increases the likelihood of having a girl as the first child. Specifically, a one-standard deviation increase in the level of modernity increases the overall likelihood of the first birth being female by 2.9 percentage points ceteris paribus. The increment seems to come from intervals longer than three years.