TY  - JOUR
AU  - Chakraborty,Tanika
AU  - Kim,Sukkoo
TI  - Caste, Kinship and Sex Ratios in India
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13828
PY  - 2008
Y2  - March 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13828
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13828.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Tanika Chakraborty
Department of Economics
Washington University
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
E-Mail: tchakrab@artsci.wustl.edu

Sukkoo Kim
Department of Economics
Washington University
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
Tel: 314/935-4961
Fax: 314/935-4156
E-Mail: soks@artsci.wustl.edu
AB  - This paper explores the relationship between kinship institutions and sex ratios in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Since kinship rules varied by caste, language, religion and region, we construct sex-ratios by these categories at the district-level using data from the 1901 Census of India for Punjab (North), Bengal (East) and Madras (South). We find that the female to male sex ratio varied inversely by caste-rank, rose as one moved from the North to the East and then to the South, was lower for Hindus than Muslims, and was lower for the northern Indo-Aryan rather than the southern Dravidian speaking peoples. We also find that the female deficit was greater in wheat growing regions and in areas with higher rainfall and alluvial soil. We argue that these systematic patterns in the data are largely explained by variations in the institution of family, kinship and inheritance.
ER  -