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State of the World Population 2020 report
News:
- According to the UNFPA’s State of the World Population report 2020, one in three girls missing globally due to sex selection, both pre- and post-natal, is from India.
About the report:
- The report examines the issue of missing women by studying sex ratio imbalances at birth.
- It also studies the excess female mortality due to deliberate neglect of girls because of a culture of son preference.
- Excess female mortality is the difference between observed and expected mortality of the girl child or avoidable death of girls during childhood.
Findings of the Report:
- The report cites a 2014 study to state that India has the highest rate of excess female deaths at 13.5 per 1,000 female births below the age of 5 due to postnatal sex selection.
- Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan excess female mortality of girls below 5 years of age was under 3%.
Misuse of Technology
- The advent of technology ensured that parents didn’t have to wait for the birth of their girl child to kill her but could terminate a foetus upon knowing its gender.
- This resulted in the number of girls missing due to female foeticide exceeding those that were missing because of postnatal sex selection.
Data:
- According to estimates averaged over a five year period (2013-17), annually, there were 1.2 million missing female births, at a global level.
- India had about 4,60,000 girls ‘missing’ at birth each year.
Consequences:
- These skewed numbers translate into long-term shifts in the proportions of women and men in the population of some countries.
- In many countries, this results in a “marriage squeeze” as prospective grooms far outnumber prospective brides.
- It further results in human trafficking for marriage as well as child marriages.