The Demand for Sex Selective Abortion

Claus C. Pörtner, University of Washington

Over the last two decades a significant shift in the sex ratio at birth has occurred in India. There has so far been virtually no analysis of who uses prenatal sex determination to abort female fetuses. One reason for this it the perceived lack of suitable information. I argue that one can examine the demand for sex selective abortion even in the absence of direct information on its use. I present results from two different methods. First, the determinants of the probability that a child of a given parity will be a son. Secondly, the determinants of the difference between actual spacing between births when sex selective abortion is available and the predicted spacing based on information from when it was not available. I use the two rounds of the National Family and Health Survey to examine the effectiveness of these methods.