Truth about India’s Gender Ratio

August 9, 2013 12 Comments

Birth order can affect human psychology, thoug...

We have heard a lot of discussions in the media about the skewed gender / sex ratio of India. Certain media reports and renowned economists have treated this as an elaborate scheme of female foeticide. Today let’s delve deeper into the gender statistics of India.

It is stated that many girls are aborted in the womb due to which our sex ratio is low and not equal to 1. On the face of it their reasoning seems to have some weight ‘BUT’ there is no research or report to show that the human sex ratio is equal to 1. In fact the natural human sex ratio is 1.06 males per female[i]. Converting it to a number which we all know is 940 females per 1000 males. So the natural sex ratio is not 1000 females per 1000 males but hovers around 940 females per 1000 males.

Many factors such as age of the parents, their environmental exposure, multiple births, birth order, stress and stage of ovulation cycle decides whether the X or the Y chromosome will fertilize the egg[ii].

The gender ratio of India is 943 females per 1000 males[iii] which is above the natural sex ratio for humans. If there was rampant female foeticide then this ratio ought to have been lower, which we clearly see is not the case.

So we come to 2 conclusions / hypothesis –

  1. There is no rampant female foeticide
  2. If we believe that there is rampant female feticide then the census date for 2011 is incorrect and the government needs to verify the census process

Which one is the correct hypothesis you decide…

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