Impact of mother's education on the relative survival probability of girls in the household.

摘要

India's highly skewed sex ratios have long been the cause of concern for scholars and policy makers alike. The unbalanced nature if this statistic has been attributed to the low relative survival probabilities of females in India due to pre and postnatal discrimination within the household. In this context, female education is expected to be an important agent of change.;Increasing female education has long been considered a good proxy for the changing status of women in society. Mother's education in particular has emerged as an important predictor for numerous outcomes within the household including child health. Based on these premises one would expect to see noticeable changes in the sex ratio of the country in the face of increasing female education rates. More so, in light of the fact that traditionally the overall literacy rates in India (male and female) have not been high. Throughout the past few decades there have been substantial improvements in education rates for men and women and a narrowing of the gender gap in this regard but this has not translated into improvements in the sex ratio of the country, in fact the juvenile sex ratio of the country has worsened. The main objective of this study is to provide a clear theoretical model for analyzing the relationship between mother's education and relative female survival probabilities in India and test it using data. Data used comes from the Demographic and Health Survey in India (1998-99).;I decompose the overall question into three smaller questions and aim to undertake a theoretical and empirical study of each. Firstly, how does increasing female education affect son preference? Secondly, is female education an important predictor of the use of sex selective technology? And lastly, does increasing female education impact the gender gap in mortality for boys and girls? I employ rigorous econometric methods to answer each question. It is possible then to bring the results of these individual questions together to study the likely impact of female literacy on the relative survival probabilities of girls within the household.