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More Women Missing, Fewer Girls Dying: The Impact of Abortion on Sex Ratios at Birth and Excess Female Mortality in Taiwan

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Author Info
Ming-Jen Lin
Nancy Qian
Jin-Tan Liu

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Abstract

Many countries with "deficits" in their female population see banning sex-selective abortion as a way to curb the observed sex imbalance. However, they rarely discuss the potentially negative unintended consequences of this ban on female survival rates as parents may be forced to substitute post-natal for pre-natal sex-selection. This paper presents novel empirical evidence on the impact of access to abortion on sex ratios at birth and relative female infant mortality. We use the universe of birth and death registry data from Taiwan and exploit plausibly exogenous variation in the availability of sex-selective abortion caused legislative changes to identify the causal effects of sex-selective abortion on sex ratios at birth and excess female mortality. We find that sex-selective abortion increased the fraction of males at birth by approximately 0.7 percentage-points, accounting for approximately 100% of the observed increase in sex ratios at birth during the 1980s; and it decreased relative female neo-natal mortality by approximately 61%. We estimate that approximately 13 more female infants survived for every 100 aborted female fetuses.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14541.

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Date of creation: Dec 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14541

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J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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  1. Lena Edlund, 1999. "Son Preference, Sex Rations, and Marriage Patterns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1275-1304, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Karen Norberg, 2004. "Partnership Status and the Human Sex Ratio at Birth," NBER Working Papers 10920, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Robin Burgess & Juzhong Zhuang, 2000. "Modernisation and Son Preference," STICERD - Development Economics Papers 29, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE. [Downloadable!]
  4. Qian, Nancy, 2006. "Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance," CEPR Discussion Papers 5986, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Shin-Yi Chou & Jin-Tan Liu & Michael Grossman & Theodore J. Joyce, 2007. "Parental Education and Child Health: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Taiwan," NBER Working Papers 13466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Schultz, T Paul, 1982. "Market Opportunities, Genetic Endowments, and Intrafamily Resource Distribution: Child Survival in Rural India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 803-15, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. John Donohue & Steven Levitt, 2000. "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series 1009, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics. [Downloadable!]
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