c  Psw 0- / *40
POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER   2140
Gender Bias in China,                                                   The proportions of girls
Imissing' rose sharply in these
the Republic of Korea,                                                  countries during times of war,
and India   192                                               famine, and fertility decline
an d  Inul1a  1 9 2Z.O-9 0Resulting shortages of wives
improved the treatment of
Effects of War, Famine,                                                 adult women without
and  Fertility  Decline                                                 reducing discrimination
against daughters or
increasing women's
Monica Das Gupta                                                        autonomy The latter goals
Li Shuzhuo                                                              can be reached only with
fundamental changes in
women's family position -
changes that are taking place
only slowly
The World Bank
Development Research Group
Poverty and Human Resources                                                      H
June 1999



|POLI(Y RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 2140
Su-mmary findings
Kinship systems in China, the Republic of Korea, and             * Encouraged the continuation of brideprice in China,
North India have similar features that generate               while in India there was a shift to dowry.
d;scrimnation against girls, and these countries have            * Influenced the extent and manifestations of violence
some of the highest proportions of girls "missing" in the     against women.
world.                                                          An oversupply of women is the worst scenario for
Das Gupta and Li document how the excess mortality          women, as there are fewer constraints to domestic
of girls was increased by war, famine, and fertility          violence. A shortage of women leads to better treatment
decline - all of which constrained household resources        of wives, as people become more careful not to lose a
-- between 1920 and 1990.                                     wife. However in situations of shortage, a small
Of the three countries, China experienced the most          proportion of women may be subject to new types of
crises during this period (with civil war, invasion, and      violence such as being kidnapped for marriage.
famine). The resulting excess mortality of girls in China     Ironically, then, higher levels of discrimination against
offset the demographic forces making for a surplis of         girls can help reduce violence against women.
wives as overall mortality rates declined. India had the        When women are in short supply, their treatment
quietest history during this period, and consequently         improves. But their autonomy can increase only with
followed the expected pattern of a growing surplus of         fundamental changes in their family position, changes
available wives.                                              that are taking place only slowly.
These changes in sex ratios had substantial social
ramifications. The authors hypothesize that these
demographic factors:
This paper -a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the
group to study social institutions and development outcomes. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank,
1 8 1 8 H StreetNW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Monica Das Gupta, room MC3-579, telephone 202-473-1983,
fax 202-522-1153, Internet address mdasgupta@worldbank.org. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the
Web at htrp:/i/'svwv.worldbank.org/html!dec/Publications/Workpapers/home.html. June 1999. (34 pages)
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about
development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The
papers carry the nanmes of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this
pa!per are entirely those of the authors. They do not niecessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the
I countries they represent.
Produced by the Policy Research Dissemination Center



(Forthcoming in Development and Change, Special Issue on Gendered Poverty and Wellbeing)
GENDER BIAS IN CHINA, SOUTH KOREA AND INDIA, 1920-90:
effects of war, famine and fertility decline
Monica Das Gupta
Development Economics Research Group
The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW
Washington DC 20433, USA
Email: mdasgupta~worldbank.org
&
Li Shuzhuo
Population Research Institute, Xi'an Jiaotong University
Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, 710049, China
Fax: 86-29-323-7910
The paper should not be cited without the permission of the author.
Revised version of Working Paper 97.05, Harvard University Center for Population and Development Studies. Research funded
by the United Nations Population Fund. At the time of writing this paper, Li Shuzhuo was a Bell Fellow at the Harvard
University Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge MA, USA. His fellowship was supported by the Ford
Foundation Beijing office in China, the MacArthur Foundation, the J.T.Tai and Co.Foundation Inc. and the Richard Saltonstall
Population Innovation Fund. We are grateful for comments on earlier versions of this paper, from Nirmala Banerji, Judith
Banister, Shelah Bloom, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri, Marcus Feldman, Supriya Guha, P.N.Mari Bhat, Emily MacFarquhar, Arup
Maharatna, Jonathon Morduch, Fabienne Peter and Arthur Wolf.



GENDER BIAS AND THE "MARRIAGE SQUEEZE" IN
CHINA, SOUTH KOREA AND INDIA 1920-1990:
effects of war, famine and fertility decline
Monica Das Gupta and Li Shuzhuo
How has the history of the twentieth century affected the extent of female disadvantage in child
survival in China, South Korea and India, and how has this in turn shaped spousal availability and
marriage payments? These three countries represent South and East Asia, the parts of the world
which show the highest levels of excess female child mortality. This is a longstanding pattern in all
three countries, as evidenced by data from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Xin 1989,
Kwon 1977, Visaria 1969). We explore how historical events have influenced the extent of excess
female child mortality during 1920-90, and some of the substantial social ramifications of changes
in the level of gender-based discrimination.
We examnine how the level of discrimination has been affected by events in the wider society which
place households under severe stress. The focus is on three kinds of resource constraint. The first is
the disruption and privation of war, which was experienced at the national level by China in the
first half of this century and especially during World War II, and by South Korea during the Korean
War of 1950-53. The second is famine, which was experienced on a large scale in China in 1959-
6 1. The third is the substantial fertility decline which has taken place in all three countries in recent
decades. Since these societies are characterized by strong son preference, this amounts to another
form of resource constraint on the household because reducing the number of births means reducing
the number of opportunities to have a son. Empirically, fertility decline in these countries has been
accompanied by rising female disadvantage in survival even at low birth orders, and more
masculine sex ratios of children (Das Gupta and Bhat 1995).
There seems to be little evidence from South Asia or South Korea that the poor discriminate more
against their daughters, the hypothesis being that sharper resource constraints force them to allocate
resources to the more valued males'. However, resource constraints may affect discrimination in
another way: people may increase the level of discrimination when they experience a tightening of
circumstances relative to their own previous position, as when they are caught up in a war or
famine. This is the hypothesis which we examine.
We also explore how the marriage market has been affected by the extent of discrimination,
building on Caldwell et al.'s (1983) idea of the "marriage squeeze". The history of these three
countries is quite different, and these differences are reflected in the extent of discrimination against
girls. We explore how this has affected spousal availability in these three countries, and how the
treatment of women is affected by whether they are in surplus or shortage.
We begin by discussing what drives this comparison of three countries which are so disparate in
many ways. Despite their very different levels of economic and social development and political
systems, they have fundamental similarities in the position of daughters in the family, and in the
' Early censuses in India show that in regions with strong son preference, the higher castes had more imbalanced sex ratios than
the lower castes (Miller 1981, Das Gupta 1987). Krishnaji (1987) and Murthi et al. (1995) using district-level data from India found
that, if anything, the rich discriminate more than the poor. Data from South Korea also suggests this (Das Gupta et al. 1997).
1



nature of marriage. We then examine the historical trends in female disadvantage and how they are
related to major resource constraints. Finally, we look at trends in spousal availability and some of
the social implications of these historical trends, including the implications for marriage payments,
and the situation of poorer people and of women.
I SIMILARITIES IN THE POSITION OF DAUGHTERS IN CHINA, SOUTH KOREA
AND INDIA2
China and South Korea are culturally fairly homogeneous countries in which the majority of the
population belongs to a culture of rigidly patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems based on a clan
system. India is more diverse. The dominant kinship system Northwest India is strikingly similar to
that of China and South Korea. Other parts of Northern India have forms of patriarchy which are
less rigidly organized. Southern India has elements of a more bilateral kinship system, and also
exhibits far less son preference than the North. We therefore compare the three countries and then
examine the case of Northwest India, because that is the most directly comparable with China and
South Korea in terms of kinship and the potential for gender bias.
In the following brief and broadbrush sketch of how the position of daughters is affected by the
system of kinship and marriage, we refer to a "traditional" system. Traditions of course are far from
immutable, and here we refer to the social arrangements prevalent in these countries through much
of this century. These arrangements persist to a considerable extent today despite much social
change. All three countries have experienced considerable socio-economic development, and South
Korea in particular is highly developed and urbanized today. However, the kinship system in these
societies are especially resilient3, and values relating to the family and marriage have been much
slower to change.
In these rigidly patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems, lineages are defined in terms of males
alone. Lineages are strictly exogamous, so they import brides to produce the next generation of the
lineage. Membership of a lineage and one's position in it is conferred by dint of being a particular
man's offspring, and the identity of the mother is almost irrelevant to this. Women are thus merely
biological reproducers for a lineage other than their lineage of birth, and men are the social
reproducers, the ones who confer an identity to the newborn child. Rights to a woman are
transferred to the husband's family at the time of marriage. It is understood that the woman's future
2 The discussion in this section draws on the voluminous literature on kinship and social organization in these three countries-as
well as on our field interviews in these three countries. See for example Chang (1991), Chowdhury (1994), Chung (1977), Cohen
(1976), Croll (1983), Das Gupta (1995b), Davis and Harrell (1993), Dyson and Moore (1983), Freedman (1965), Gates (1996),
Goody (1990), Greenhalgh (1994), Hershman (1981), Hsu (1948), Hu (1948), Karve (1965), Kendall (1996), Kim (1989), Kolenda
(1987), Lee and Campbell (1996), Lee and Wang (1997), Pastemak (1972), Pradhan (1966), Skinner (1997), Stockard (1989),
Williamson (1976), Wolf (1968), Wolf and Huang (1980), and Yi (1975).
Other types of family system have shown more rapid change. Some of the most dramatic changes have taken place in
matrilineal systems. These typically practice inheritance from mother's brother to sister's son, which means that men pass on
their property to their nephews instead of their sons. This generates conflict of interest, especially when resources become
scarcer, which encourages a shift to more patrilineal family systems. By contrast, patrilineal systems have much more
congruence between the interests of lineage members, and are therefore more robust in the face of other social and economic
changes.
2



productivity and services belong to the husband's family, whatever her parents' needs may be.
Consequently, a daughter's birth is far less welcome than that of a son. The kinship system in these
settings leads to strong son preference and accompanying discrimination against daughters.
A daughter's marginality to her family of birth also affects the way in which the question of her
marriage is perceived. While her brothers are central members of the family and lineage, a
daughter's appropriate place is in her father's home only until it is time for her to marry. As an adult
she becomes extraneous to her family of birth, her appropriate position being a wife in another
family. It is highly unusual for an adult woman to live with her parental family. In short, there is no
socially acceptable role for a grown woman in her family of birth, except as a visitor. She must
leave and make way for incoming daughters-in-law.
The need to marry off one's daughter is also affected by the fact that premarital sex and especially
premarital childbirth bring tremendous dishonor to a family. For many reasons, then, there is much
pressure on parents to find a groom for their daughter and give her away in marriage. The norm was
for marriages to be arranged: it was the father's duty to see to this, and after the father's death the
duty fell to the brother. Parents of grown daughters are reminded of their obligation to marry off
their daughter. It is culturally unacceptable to have daughters remaining single, as evidenced by the
negligible proportions of women never-marrying in these countries.
Marriages entail some costs for both the groom's as well as the bride's family. Currently in India,
the average net expenses of a daughter's marriage are far higher than a son's marriage, because large
dowries are paid to the groom's family. In China and South Korea, the average net expenses of a
son's marriage are several times higher than that of a daughter's marriage (Bae 1997, Williamson
1976, Xie 1997). Yet even in the latter case, people resent even the relatively small payments they
make for their daughters' marriages, because this is viewed as a net loss for the family. Relatively
heavy expenses on a son's wedding are less resented because the money is still viewed as remaining
within the family.
There are thus some critical points of similarity between these three countries in the nature of
marriage, which distinguish them from most other cultures. For example, in large parts of rural
Europe it was completely acceptable, and even the norm, for grown daughters to remain single for
many years and look after their parents or work on someone else's farm (Sieder and Mitterauer
1983; Arensberg and Kimball 1968). Besides, marriage was a matter of the couple's own choosing,
not the responsibility of the parents. In such societies, a shortage of available grooms would be
more of a personal problem for a woman, not an intolerable situation for parents to avoid by
whatever means possible. This is in sharp contrast with the pressure to find a groom for ones
daughter in these East and South Asian societies.
II DATA AND METHODOLOGY
Data:
The data used in this paper are from the national population censuses of China, South Korea and
India. Where indicated, we have also used other sources. For China, these include the 1995 One
3



Percent National Population Survey and the Annual Population Change Surveys for 1989 to 1993.
For South Korea, they include the 1995 Korean Population and Housing Census and the Annual
Vital Statistics from 1985 to 1992.
The accuracy of age reporting in the censuses is critical to our analysis. In the case of China and
South Korea, the accuracy of age reporting is very high (Coale and Banister 1994; Kwon 1977),
because almost everybody knows the animal symbol of their birth year, which helps pinpoint the
year of birth. Error will thus be small and also not subject to age-heaping. This made our analysis
for China and South Korea simple and robust.
By contrast, the quality of age-reporting in the Indian censuses is subject to serious age-heaping,
making it impossible to use these data for many purposes. The data are officially smoothed, but the
linear assumptions underlying smoothing break down for the youngest and oldest age groups4.
Therefore we are unable to use these data to analyze sex ratios of annual birth cohorts, since this
would require using the youngest age group. We are, however, able to use the smoothed data for the
analysis of spousal availability, as the smoothing assumptions have greater validity for the relevant
age-groups .
Method of calculating the excess sex ratios:
To calculate the proportions of girls missing in each birth cohort in China and South Korea, we use
the methodology and the index developed by Coale and Banister (1994) in their study on "missing"
females in China. Thus we calculate the observed sex ratio of each single-year birth cohort and
compute a five-year moving average of the ratio. We then estimate how excessively masculine this
sex ratio is by comparing it to the expected ratio in the West model life tables (Coale and Demeny
1966). This was calculated using the female life expectancy prevailing in the country at the time
(see Table 4 in the Appendix), along with the assumption that the normal sex ratio at birth is 1.06.
These model sex ratios are based on life tables from a range of countries, and form a useful
benchmark of the "normal" sex ratio in the absence of discrimination. The censuses used for this
analysis are those conducted between 1953 and 1990 in China, and between 1960 and 1990 in
South Korea.
The estimated excess sex ratios for China and South Korea (Figure 1) reflect cumulative loss of
females from birth till the time of the census, resulting from sex selective abortion, female
infanticide and discrimination against girls and women which reverses their normal biological
advantage in survival. To focus more on the discrimination in childhood, we use the most recent
census data on each birth cohort. The method is described more fully in the Appendix. The same
method is also used for South Korea. For India, we were unable to apply this method because of
problems of age-reporting, as mentioned above. Instead, we show the juvenile (aged 0-4) sex ratios
of India from 1951 to 1991 to give some idea of missing girls in India.
4 Personal communication from Mari Bhat, based on his extensive work on the Indian census data.
5 Normal smoothing methods do not eliminate systematic age errors which vary by sex. However, unless these systematic errors
have changed substantially over time, the trend in spousal availability is more or less correctly reported by the smoothed sex ratios.
4



Method of estimating spousal availability:
The index used in this paper is the ratio of males to younger females for each five-year birth cohort
at census time, using the observed average age gap at first marriage between men and women
prevailing at the time in each country (Table 1). For each male birth cohort, we calculate the
6
observed ratio for this cohort when they are aged 20-29  . The exception is the last calculation for
each country, which uses males from age 5 in order to look at the future spousal availability 7. For
this last group, we use the current age gap at marriage.
To separate the effect of fertility decline from that of discrimination, we calculate the "normal"
ratios of males to younger females which should prevail in the absence of discrimination. For this,
we estimate the expected number of females given the observed number of males of the same age
and the "normal" sex ratio from the corresponding life tables. The difference between the observed
ratio and the normal ratio is the estimated effect of gender bias on spousal availability8.
There are several demographic models to investigate the marriage market. Park and Cho (1995) and
Tuljapurkar et al.( 995) are primarily interested in the future marriage market, and therefore use the
current age gap between spouses as the basis for their calculations. Bhat and Halli (1996) focus on
the past marriage market, and hold the age gap between spouses constant in order to estimate what
would have been spousal availability had the age gap not changed. This approach takes into account
the fact that the age gap between spouses is partly influenced by spousal availability. Of course,
many other factors also influence the age gap between spouses, including socio-economic factors
such as levels of female education, and changes in social norms. In the case of China, the age gap is
also influenced by changes in marriage laws. Bhat and Halli's estimates are therefore designed to
reflect the full extent of marriage squeeze which would have prevailed had the spousal age gap not
changed, but are not designed to reflect actual spousal availability except at the time of the initial
equilibrium. Our model has to allow for empirical changes in spousal age gap, as our primary
motivation in this paper is to estimate changes over time in actual spousal availability.
There are several aspects of the potentially complex dynamics of "marriage markets" which we
cannot take into account. For example, differences in the remarriage rates of widows and widowers
influence spousal availability. Bhat and Halli (1996) are able to increase the complexity of the
marriage market analysed by using the data from the Indian censuses on remarriage rates by sex.
6In the case of China, the censuses were not carried out every ten years, so the age groups are wider in some cases. In such cases,
there is a small difference in exposure to mortality, which will slightly affect our analysis insofar as there is a sex differential in this
different exposure.
7For the most recent estimates, we had to supplement the census data with data from annual statistics, in which we assumed the
normal sex ratio at birth to be 1.06. This is because for China we do not know the inflators to match the 1995 1% census data with the
1990 census, and for South Korea the single-year age-distribution from the 1995 census data is not yet available. Thus for China we
used the births from the 1989-93 annual population change surveys, and for South Korea we used the births from the 1985-92 vital
statistics. For India no sex-specific data are available beyond the 1991 census, and so we could not extend the calculation beyond the
1980-84 birth cohort.
8In the case of India, the data on spousal age gap and life expectancy before 1947 refer to pre-Partition India, including presentday
Pakistan and Bangladesh, while those after 1947 refer to presentday India. However, the population base on which the calculations of
spousal availability are made are taken from the post-Partition censuses. Thus our estimates of spousal availability, in Tables 2 and 3,
reflect the situation in presentday India.
5



Unfortunately, the Chinese and South Korean data do not include information on remarriage rates,
and therefore we have to ignore this potentially important factor. We also do not address the fact
that people choose spouses on the basis of matching education, class and other characteristics. In
addition, we do not consider the possibility that some people may choose not to marry: this is an
important factor in some post-industrial societies, but not in these three countries during the period
we are studying. Over 99% of women aged 40-49 were ever-married in the 1990 censuses of China
and South Korea. Our method provides an approximate estimate of spousal availability in the first
marriage market (Table 1). That is, it gives rough estimates of the historical and present proportions
of people never-married given their spousal age gap, and the future trend based on the current
spousal age gap.
III CRISES AND THE MANIFESTATION OF GENDER BIAS
In this analysis, it is only possible to examine the effect of major national-level crises. More
localized events may have been very significant in themselves, but their impact is likely to be
drowned in national-level sex ratios. Therefore our focus here is only on large-scale crises.
China:
Of the three countries studied here, China has had the most eventful history during this century, as
least from the point of view of households trying to make their way in life (Chi 1976, Bianco 1967).
The briefest sketch of this history makes the vicissitudes of ordinary life apparent. The century
began with the Qing dynasty in tenuous control of the country. In 1911 a revolution deposed the
Qing dynasty and installed a nationalist government under Sun Yat Sen. The country was not united
under one central government, and "warlords" were battling hard for hegemony. Meanwhile, the
Communist forces were gradually increasing in strength.
Through the first half of this century, the battles between the warlords, and between the nationalists
and the Communists created a situation of continuous uncertainty for people. One of the least
manifestations of this was uncertainty about which set of authorities was in charge and had to be
dealt with. This was interspersed with periods of chaos when people might face being requisitioned
to send family members to join the troops, having food supplies requisitioned, being pillaged by
hungry troops, and occasionally having to flee in the face of advancing troops. All this is reflected
in fairly high sex ratios of cohorts born during the 1920s and 1930s (Figure 1).
The most dramatic effect on sex ratios is evidenced when the Japanese invaded China during the
Second World War. The Japanese had a presence in Manchuria from the early years of the century
which they used to build up an agricultural as well as industrial base in this region rich in coal anid
iron and a thriving armaments industry (Cumings 1981, Chi 1976, McCormack 1977). This was
followed by a more formal occupation of Manchuria in 1931. In 1937, Japan launched a massive
invasion of the main body of China. This caused havoc, as people fled in the face of the advancing
army and also had to deal with the requisitions of their own armies. To add to the people's
difficulties, they had two Chinese armies to contend with: the Nationalists and the Communists
who, during the Japanese invasion, were at best in an uneasy alliance with each other and at worst
in open competition with each other.
As Japanese troops swept through the densely-populated eastern half of China in a blitzkrieg from
6



1937, the sex ratios shot up (Figure 1). Apparently the disruption was such that people felt they had
to make some harsh choices about which family members to sustain. Stories about this period refer
to female abandonment and infanticide (Tan 1989). An interview with a woman in her sixties in
Zhejiang province gives a firsthand account of such an experience:
When I was six years old, my mother said that I should be sold. I begged my father not to do
this, that I would eat very little if only they would let me stay at home .
Increased discrimination against daughters during periods of crisis was also common in nineteenth
century China. Using data from local gazeteers from several provinces of China, Xin (1989)
describes how levels of female infanticide rose in times of famine, drought, war and other economic
stress, with comments such as:
After the war, the economy was in a slump. The land was deserted so drowning female
babies was common °.
The Japanese invasion would be expected to cause excess mortality of young men, but this is not
visible here because they would have been born largely before 1920. During the 1950s, with the
establishment of Communist rule, life became much calmer and more predictable for ordinary
households. This peace contributed to a lowering of discrimination against daughters, helped by the
Communist ideology of gender equality.
During the famine of 1959-61 the sex ratios went up again (Figure 1). Those who were young girls
at the time of the famine experienced the maximum excess mortality, so the peak excess ratios are
in the cohorts born in 1954-58, a few years before the famine. After the famine and through the
1970s, levels of discrimination remained fairly constant, with about 2% of girls missing. In the
early 1980s the sex ratio began to rise once again. Since the mid-1980s, it has been rising at an
accelerating rate, probably because the availability of sex-selective abortion makes it easier to
discriminate against daughters11. Sex ratios rose at a similar time in South Korea and India (Figures
1 and 2), and this is very likely to be for the same reason.
South Korea:
Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, and remained under Japanese colonial administration until
the end of the Second World War. Thus there was no war on Korean territory during the Second
World War (Kim 1981, Han 1970). From 1950, however, the country was racked by war, especially
in the North. The Korean War caused havoc between June 1950 and March 1951 as the two sides
pushed each other up and down the peninsula. After this, till the peace settlement in July 1953,
there was continued fighting around the ceasefire line, and heavy bombing of North Korea which
was held by Communist forces. Actual fighting never reached the southernmost part of the Korean
peninsula (Han 1970, Hastings 1987).
Interviews12 with older people in South Korea reveal something of the havoc when the Northern
troops pushed Southwards at the beginning of the war:
(old man in a village in Kyungsangpuk Province): When the North Korean troops came
near our village, we fled into the hills with our families. Nevertheless, they managed to
9 Interview conducted by Monica Das Gupta and Li Bohua in 1996.
10 The word "common" is ours. The original translation was "very popular".
1 Zeng et al.(1993) report that the import of ultrasound machines into China rose sharply in the mid-1980s.
12 Interviews conducted by Monica Das Gupta and Bae Hwa-Ok in 1996.
7



catch some of our men and forced them to work for their troops. When the South Korean
troops recaptured our village, they asked 'Who worked for the North Koreans?' Anyone who
admitted to it was shot. We feared both sides.
(old woman in Taegu city): As the North Koreans advanced, we fled our village and headed
to the deep South where we had some relatives. On the way there we were able to buy some
food because we were fortunate to have some money, but I lost the child I was expecting..."
Equally revealing is the youth of those who died: the sex ratios indicate that substantial numbers of
boys as young as fifteen years old were involved in the fighting. The Korean War caused so much
mortality among young males that the sex ratios for the cohorts born between 1920-36 are
excessively feminine.
The effect of the Korean War on girls is evident in the sex ratios. As in the case of the Chinese
famine, the maximum brunt of excess mortality was borne not by those born during the famine but
by girls who were young children at the time. These girls appear to have suffered discrimination,
whether through neglect or abandonment. Note that the sex ratios reflect only the excess mortality
of girls over and above the fact that children of both sexes undoubtedly suffered during the war.
After the Korean War, there have been no major crises in South Korea which are likely to impact
on sex ratios. This has been a period of peace and rapid economic and social development. During
this period, the proportion of females missing in South Korea follows a path very similar to that of
China, rising once again in the 1980s.
India:
India has had perhaps the least eventful history during the period we consider here. Improvements
in irrigation reduced the likelihood of harvest failure, and the construction of a railway network
enabled the transport of grain to avert mortality from local harvest failures. As a result, there has
been no major famine since 1920 with the exception of the Bengal Famine of 1943. From the point
of view of our analysis, we would not expect to find an impact of this famine because it affected
only one part of the country, and half of the affected region is no longer in India but in Bangladesh.
Neither has India experienced a war during this period. Indian soldiers participated in the Second
World War in all the theaters where it was fought, but there was little fighting on Indian territory.
Towards the end of the war the Japanese pushed briefly into the part of India bordering on Burnma,
but were quickly pushed back. As it happens, this part of India shows no son preference, so child
sex ratios are unlikely to have been affected even if the war there had lasted longer. The Partition of
India was obviously a very traumatic event for the country, as it was split into three sections on the
basis of religion. Tens of thousands of people were killed, mostly in the months just before Partition
and millions became homeless refugees, having fled from riots, arson and looting in their home
areas.
For all this, Partition involved riots, not war. For a few months there were serious riots and some
administrative disruption in Punjab and Delhi. Yet in the midst of riots and a large movement of
population across the borders, the administration managed to set up camps for the refugees. Shortly
after Independence, arrangements were made for some rough exchange of property between those
leaving India and those leaving Pakistan. Although there was considerable disruption, the situation
8



during Partition was not comparable to the breakdown (or absence) of State machinery during the
Japanese invasion of China or during the Korean War.
Whatever impact Partition may have had on Indian sex ratios is reduced by two factors. One is that
Southern India was very little affected by the riots. The second is that, as in the case of the Bengal
Famine, only half the affected territory is still in India, reducing further the weight of the affected
region in India as a whole. The region where we would expect the maximum impact of Partition is
Punjab, because it has strong gender bias and experienced the greatest disruption during Partition.
As discussed above, the poor quality of age-reporting in Indian censuses make it difficult to study
this. However, the juvenile sex ratio for India in 1951 is higher than that for 1961. This is even
sharper in the case of Punjab (Figure 2). This may reflect increased discrimination during Partition,
but part of it may be due to ordinary fluctuations.
A number of points emerge from comparing the juvenile sex ratios of India with China and South
Korea during recent decades when fertility has declined (Figure 2)13. Firstly, the sex ratios for India
are low compared with China and South Korea. This is because India is culturally heterogeneous
and the South shows relatively balanced sex ratios. This regional pattern is remarkably resilient
over time (Visaria 1969; Das Gupta and Bhat 1995). To illustrate excess female mortality in the
region with the strongest gender bias, we show the juvenile sex ratio for the Northwestern States of
Punjab and Haryana (Figure 2). These are higher even than those of China and South Korea.
The second point which emerges from these data is that the main rise in sex ratios in all three
countries is after 1980. This suggests that the impact of fertility decline on sex ratios is substantially
raised by the spread of sex-selective technology during the 1980s.
IV SPOUSAL AVAILABILITY AND THE "MARRIAGE SQUEEZE"
Improved child survival earlier in this century led to a growing population in all three countries, as
in most of the rest of developing world. Consequently, successive birth cohorts increased in size
until fertility decline became well-established, after the 1960s (Figure 3). Given the fact that in
these countries men marry women from younger cohorts than their own (Table 1), this means that
the three phases of the "demographic transition" are associated with different forms of marriage
squeeze. In the pre-transition phase the size of successive cohorts was not growing rapidly and we
expect discrimination to generate a surplus of men. With the child mortality decline that all three
countries experienced earlier this century, there may be a surplus of women because birth cohorts
are increasing in size. The extent of this surplus depends on the extent of discrimination. More
recently there has been fertility decline, which again makes for a surplus of men, both because
younger cohorts will be smaller and because fertility decline can raise the level of discrimination.
The period we examine, that is the birth cohorts of 1920-1990, includes the period of mortality
decline followed by fertility decline.
Our analysis is intended simply to illustrate changes in spousal availability and how it was affected
13 Note that the Indian juvenile sex ratios may be underestimated because of age mis-reporting, with boys ages being overstated
(Mari Bhat, personal communication).
9



by excess female mortality. Of course, excess female mortality is just one factor influencing spousal
availability. Responses to the marriage squeeze are heavily influenced by cultural norms. For
example, if it were more acceptable for women to remain unmarried or to marry men substantially
younger than themselves, many of the effects we describe would be greatly mitigated. However,
these options have limited cultural acceptability.
The age at marriage influences our illustration considerably. If men and women have the same
mean age at marriage, the proportion of "missing girls" would heavily influence the availability of
spouses. However when men and women differ in mean age at marriage, the rate of growth of the
population and the average age gap between spouses become the main determinants of spousal
availability (Caldwell et al. 1983). We discuss these dynamics in the context of each of the three
countries, and then develop some hypotheses about how spousal availability may have affected
marriage payments and the treatment of women.
China:
In the absence of discrimination against girls, China should have had a shortage of marriageable
men until 1970, since until then fertility levels were high and the size of successive cohorts was
increasing. However, this shortage was largely removed by discrimination, and for most of the
period before 1970 there was some surplus of men (Table 2). Even the dramatic rise in
discrimination against girls during the Second World War resulted in only a moderate rise in the
surplus of men, because its effect on spousal availability was heavily cushioned by population
growth. The male surplus rose for the cohorts of men born between 1930-44, but only those born in
1935-39 experienced a substantial rise in the excess of men. This is despite the fact that an
estimated 17% of females were "missing" from the birth cohort of 1937-41.
The famine of 1959-61 was accompanied by a slump in fertility, as famines usually are, followed by
a brief post-famine recovery in fertility. These fertility fluctuations made for a shortage of spouses
followed by a surplus of spouses. The net effect is of a somewhat balanced marriage market for
men born in 1955-64.
Although the proportion of missing girls was highest at the time of the Japanese invasion, the
problem of spousal availability is worse now because of fertility decline. From 1970-80 fertility
declined rapidly in China, falling from 5.8 in 1970 to 3.6 in 1975 and 2.2 in 1980 (Figure 3). Since
1980, fertility levels have fluctuated and shown relatively little overall decline. The effect of the
early period of rapid fertility decline was to sharply increase the shortage of marriageable women,
as successive cohort size fell sharply. Men born in 1970-74 experienced a substantial rise in
shortage of women. This was not offset by a surplus of available wives for subsequent cohorts of
men, as these continued to register a smaller but steady surplus of men. This situation was
aggravated even further for males born after 1985, when levels of discrimination against girls rose
(Figure 1) as new technology made such discrimnination easier. The cohort of males born in 1985-89
will suffer from the same shortage of spouses as those born around the time of the Japanese
invasion. Their situation is worse, than those born in 1935-39, however, because it is unlikely that
the shortage will be reduced in the immediate future, building up an increasing shortage of women.
The effect on spousal availability of fertility decline and of discrimination are distinguished in
Table 3. Men born in 1970-74 will experience greater shortage of available wives than any other
10



cohort of men born during 1920-90. Most of this shortage is caused by fertility decline. For cohorts
born after 1975, the effect of fertility decline is diminished, and for men born during 1985-89 most
of the shortage of future wives is caused by discrimination against girls.
Men manying in the late 1990s will experience the maximum shortage of spouses. This shortage
will accumulate gradually and then receive another large boost in the second decade of the next
century, when males born after 1985 enter marriageable ages. At least 12% of these men will not be
able to find wives. Given the continued rise in levels of discrimination against girls between 1990
and 1995 (Figure 2), the shortage of available wives will continue to rise in the foreseeable future,
and higher proportions of men will not be able to find wives. Given the small age gap between
spouses of around 1.7 years in China in 1990, even the unlikely event of a long-term rise in fertility
will not cushion much the shortage of available wives. This shortage will continue to increase
unless discrimination ends. Some of the problems associated with this are discussed briefly below.
South Korea:
South Korea also has a history of discrimination against girls. However, because of rapid
population growth and the four-year age gap at first marriage, there was actually some surplus of
women available for marriage for males born between 1935-49. We do not analyze spousal
availability for men born before that, since the heavy casualties associated with the Korean War
(Figure 1) affected both single men and those who were already married. The Korean War also
caused some fertility fluctuations, with a drop in fertility during the war and a postwar recovery of
fertility (Kwon 1977:141). The latter increased the surplus of women available for men born in
1950-54. However, this surplus was followed by the beginning of fertility decline, which caused a
shortage of women, so the effect of some of the fluctuations in spousal availability for men born
during the 1950s could be reduced by increasing the age range within which spouses are sought.
The fertility decline which began in 1960 changed this to a situation in which there was a shortage
of women available for marriage. The increase in discrimination against girls since the mid-1980s
has added to the effect of fertility decline (Table 3), such that there were nearly 25% more males
born in 1980-84 than females of the appropriate age. The average age gap between spouses was still
3 years in 1990, so shrinking cohort size still affects the availability of women.
As the fertility transition nears its end now, there will be less shortage of women resulting from
reductions in the size of successive birth cohorts. Discrimination will now become the main factor
creating a shortage of women. So far the trend has been for discrimination to rise (Figure 2), but
without the added factor of fertility decline there will be a much smaller shortage of women.
Fertility fluctuations will also affect this. For example, there has been a rise in the number of births
during 1991-94 compared with 1984-90 (National Statistical Office 1994:20), probably because
these are the births of the larger cohort born during the "baby-boom" after the Korean War.
Consequently, for males born in 1985-89 there is only a surplus of 7% compared with females three
years younger than themselves. This is of course substantial enough to cause a serious problem, but
far less than the 25% shortfall experienced by males born in 1980-84. Discrimination accounts for
6% of the shortfall for males born in 1980-84, and all of the 7% shortfall of females for males born
in 1985-89.
The worst shortage of potential wives will thus be felt by those manying in the early decades of the
11



next century. This will be followed by a continuing shortage of women for the foreseeable future,
caused mostly by discrimination against girls. There are already signs of the pressure of spousal
availability, and some of this is resolved by importing women from elsewhere: for example, from
amongst the ethnic Koreans in Northern China and from the Philippines14
India:
India has had a surplus of women throughout the period we study, reversing only for the males born
after 1980 (Table 2). The surplus has been substantial: for males born between 1920-59, there was
approximately 9% more women than men of marriageable age. Moreover, the female surplus has
been steady, unmarked by even brief reversals in spousal availability which could ease the situation.
Thus the pressure on women in the "marriage market" has been intense throughout this period.
This consistent pattern of a surplus of women in India is generated by the fact that rapid population
growth has created growing cohort sizes. With the steady mortality decline in the country since
1920, child survival increased, increasing the size of successive cohorts. The age gap between
spouses has also been wider than in South Korea or China (Table 1), so the impact of growing
cohort size on the availability of wives is larger. Another factor is the relative peace of the country's
history since 1920, without any countrywide famine or war which might have raised discrimination
against girls and reduced the surplus of women. Discrimination against girls is also lower on
aggregate in India than in these two countries, since only Northern India shows strong
discrimination against girls. Northwest India had a shortage of women at the tum of the century, but
we cannot analyse spousal availability there in the same way because it is not a closed population:
they could and did import women on a regular basis.
Fertility decline has taken place at a much slower pace in India than in South Korea or China
(Figure 3), such that the size of successive cohorts has only recently begun to shrink. Combined
with a larger age gap between spouses and less discrimination on aggregate than these countries,
fertility decline did not quickly generate a surplus of men. Instead, it made for a balanced "marriage
market" (Table 2) for men born between 1965 and 1979. The next cohort (born 1980-84) will
experience a surplus of men. Given the trend of continuing fertility decline, this surplus will
increase, augmented by rising discrimination against girls (Figure 2).
V SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF HISTORICAL TRENDS IN GENDER BIAS
Implications for marriage costs and age gap between spouses:
China and India provide an interesting contrast in their history of spousal availability during this
century. Both countries experienced mortality decline and increasing size of successive cohorts
until their recent fertility decline. However, there was a surplus of men to marriageable women
throughout this period in China, while in India the opposite was the case. This is partly because
China has higher levels of discrimination against girls than India has on aggregate. Moreover, levels
of discrimination were raised in China by national-scale wars and famines, which India was spared
14 Based on field interviews in South Korea by Monica Das Gupta and Bae Hwa-Ok. The marriage of women from the Philippines
was also reported in the New York Times in winter 1996-97.
12



during this period. Another factor is some differences in the cultural constraints on marriage
choices: the average age gap between spouses was smaller in China than in India. These factors
have several implications for marriage arrangements.
We calculate that there was a balance in spousal availability in India at the turn of the century,
which changed from 1921 to a substantial surplus (around 9%) of women. The sex ratio of males
aged 17-26 to females 6-7'5 years younger than them was 1.02 (1881), .98 (1891), .90 (1901,
following a decade of severe famines with excess male mortality), .97 (1911), .91 (1921), .92
(1931), and .92 (1951). This corroborates the view in several studies on India that there has been a
surplus of women generated by improving child survival during this century, and that this has
contributed to a shift from brideprice to dowry and dowry inflation. Caldwell et al.(1983) were the
first to argue this, and other studies have concurred (Rao 1993, Billig 1992, Bhat and Halli 1996). It
is interesting to note that in field interviews people themselves attribute the rise in dowries to the
surplus of women (Epstein 1973, Caldwell et al.1983).
We extend Caldwell et al.'s (1983) argument by hypothesizing that brideprice has continued to be
practiced in China because of a surplus of men through this century. Accounts suggest that there
has also been inflation in brideprice, especially in poorer regions, because of the increasing
difficulty of finding a wife (Zhu 1992). In the case of India, the surplus of men that we can expect
for birth cohorts after 1980 means that there is hope that dowry inflation will taper off. Using
survey data from South-central India, Raol6 has shown that there is indeed some sign of dowry
inflation tapering off in recent years. However, the social arrangements surrounding marriage
payments acquire some normative content, so marriage payments may not respond very quickly to
this demographic shift. Another factor which may slow down this response is the consistent pattern
of trying to marry girls into families of higher socio-economic status, since these transactions are
smoothed by financial incentives.
Of course, some part of dowry inflation in India is due to efforts to be hypergamous: payments have
to be higher the greater the gap in status between the households, and the more qualified the
groom 17. It is important, however, to clarify that the need for higher payments from the bride's
family is analytically distinct from a rise in the net payments from her family. Marriage typically
entails some costs for both the bride's and the groom's family. For example, with growing incomes
and desire to find qualified grooms in China and South Korea, brides' families have been paying
more for marriages (Kim 1995, Xie 1997), but the major share of marriage costs continue to be
borne by the groom's family in line with earlier practices.
Studies in India have also drawn attention to the fact that the marriage squeeze put pressure to
reduce the age gap between spouses, in order to reduce the extent of the squeeze (Caldwell 1983,
Rao 1993, Bhat and Halli 1996). This argument can also be extended to China and South Korea,
which have also experienced a marriage squeeze and a reduction in the average age gap between
spouses (Table 1). However, increasing the age gap between spouses will not be an effective
strategy for reducing the coming marriage squeeze in the next century, because with advanced
fertility transition the size of successive cohorts will not increase steadily as during this century.
15 The average age gap between spouses used in these computations was 7 years for 1881-1921, and 6 years for 1931 and 1951.
16 Vijayendra Rao, personal conununication. Unfortunately, no hard data are yet available on these trends in other parts of India.
7Caldwell (1983), Rao (1993), Billig (1992) and Kapadia (1993).
13



Does a shortage of available wives improve women's situation?
These three countries present an interesting comparison of how the "marriage squeeze" affects the
situation of women. The comparison is of interest because, as described above, they show much
commonality in kinship and marriage patterns, and in the position of young women within the
family. This sharpens the comparison of outcomes when they show very different patterns of
spousal availability. The contrast is especially sharp between China and India, because the first
shows a long-term shortage of women while India shows a long-term surplus of them.
The situation of women in India has been negatively affected in several ways by the shortage of
grooms. The fact of having to pay large dowries to marry off daughters puts enormous financial
stress on families. In the parts of the country where the culture made girls undesirable, this financial
stress adds to the problem. In the South, where there was little gender bias in the past, there is
evidence of some now. However, the persistence of cultural differences is notable: as compared
with the South, Northern India has not only higher levels of discrimination against girls, but also a
higher pace of increase in this discrimination as fertility has declined (Das Gupta and Bhat 1995).
This is despite the fact that the South has had more rapid fertility decline than the North and also
1 8
experienced a shift from bridewealth to dowry and dowry inflation
Another negative consequence of this marriage squeeze for Indian women is that they are
likely to be less valued because substitute wives are easily available. One aspect of this is the
dowry-related violence which is widely reported, with husbands' families abusing women in
order to extract more dowry from their parents. In extreme cases women are killed, for example
by engineering an "accident" in which the woman is reportedly burnt while cooking. The surplus
of women increases the likelihood of being ill-treated in other ways too, by worsening the
imbalance of power between men and women. It makes it easier for the man to be abusive and
more compelling for the woman to accept abuse: if one woman does not seem desirable, she can
be abused or cast off and another obtained if necessary.
We hypothesize that the marriage squeeze has led to a rise in dowry-related violence
during this century. In the absence of time-trend data on dowry violence, this cannot be proved
quantitatively, but there is considerable qualitative evidence on this. Field interviews stress that
such violence was rare in the past, and archival data indicate that brideprice was widespread (see
also Natarajan (1995) and Kumari (1989)). This is logically consistent with the increasing
surplus of available women. Perhaps the most compelling evidence that dowry violence has
grown substantially during this century derives from the writings of social reformers around the
turn of the century, who were deeply engaged in reforming the status of women. They discussed
in detail various aspects of women's subordination and social practices which required reform. If
dowry violence were prevalent at the time as it is today, it is difficult to believe that this would
not have figured prominently in their writings.
China's experience is in sharp contrast to that of India. Through most of this century, there was
some surplus of men. The surplus was very small amongst those marrying before 1950. We have
little hard information on how women were treated at the time. However, literary sources (Lu 1980,
18Caldwell (1983), Epstein (1973), Rao (1993), Heyer (1992) and Kapadia (1993).
14



1990, Buck 1931) suggest that although women had very low status in the household people were
not resorting to desperate and violent means to obtain wives: they saved up for a wife and married
when they could. People reportedly felt themselves lucky to obtain a wife, especially if they were
not rich. The demand for wives was enough that a widow might be sold by the husband's family
into marriage elsewhere. It also meant that during famine women could (and did) leave their
husbands to live with another man 'elsewhere temporarily or permanently. Heightened
discrimination during the Japanese invasion generated a substantial surplus of men born during the
war years. However, these men would have married when there was strict Communist control at the
community level, so there would be little question of resorting to desperate and violent means of
obtaining wives.
In recent years the shortage of women in China has become more serious and sustained, and women
are being subjected to violence because of the difficulty of obtaining wives. The fertility decline of
the early 1970s generated a substantial shortage of women for men marrying in the 1990s. The
shortage of women in China now is even larger than the surplus of women in India in earlier
decades. People have even resorted to buying brides who have been kidnapped. There are many
reports of women being kidnapped or lured by job offers and sold into marriage in distant
provinces, and of the operation of criminal gangs in this kidnapping. The situation is serious enough
19
for the Chinese government to pass an edict in 1992 to crack down on these criminals' , and for a
women's magazine to publish advice on how to avoid being kidnapped or lured (Lu 1994). Other
means are also being used to secure wives, such as resurrecting the old custom of adopting and
raising a little girl as a future bride for one's son, and families engaging their infants to each other
(Zhu 1992).
A kidnapped woman is largely powerless to recover her freedom if she does not like her situation.
The husband's community overwhelmingly supports the man, feeling that since he paid for the
woman his rights should be protected. Even the local police have in some cases taken this position,
sometimes out of fear of retribution by local people. The community protects its men by refusing to
divulge information on the location of kidnapped women, and even by cooperating to spirit them
away during a police search (Zhang and Li 1993).
Nor is it necessarily easy for women if they are rescued and returned home. The first problem is that
she has been with a man. If she was already married, her erstwhile husband may not accept her. If
she was single, she is likely to make a poor match, reducing her chances of a good life. Whether or
not a kidnapped woman succeeds in escaping, her powerlessness subjects her to pressures which
can even result in suicide. A case study of a suicide in China illustrates this point:
A married woman in Shandong province was kidnapped and sold as a bride. Six months
later, she succeeded in escaping and managed to return to her family. However, her husband
said she slept with another man, and everyone in the community knew that she had done so.
On the second day after she finally got home, she killed herselfe.
The second problem arises because her home village needs to balance its land resources. An adult
woman's place is supposed to be with her husband, not her father. Consequently the village is under
19 Min Zhu Yu Fa Zhi May 1992:41 (in Chinese).
20 Account of case study conducted by Michael Philips, and reported by him to a correspondent for the Economist. We are very
grateful to Emily MacFarquhar for this information.
15



pressure to strike women off their father's record in order to be able to allocate land to incoming
brides, as indicated by the following case:
Fen-er was abducted and sold in marriage to a man in Shanxi province. After a couple of
months she succeeded in tricking her husband to accompany her to her home area, where
she reported him to the police as having bought her from her abductor. The police dissolved
their marriage and sent her back to her parents. The following day the village head came to
her father and said that since she had been married, her land had to be returned to the village
at the end of the accounting year. Her mother argued that her marriage had been annulled,
21
but a village meeting supported the head's position
Given the community-based allocation of land, the problem is one of the village, but in India the
same problem applies to households, where daughters must move out to make room for the
daughters-in-law.
In Northwest India too, there has been a shortage of women in the past. As in the wealthier parts of
China today, part of this was resolved by importing women from elsewhere (Census of Punjab
1868, Hershman 1981). However, this did not substantially increase women's control over their
lives. They still became part of the husband's lineage property. A widow would be re-married
within the lineage and would have little option but to accept whatever arrangements her husband's
family made for her. A similar picture of being lineage property emerges from accounts of China,
despite the shortage of women there22.
South Korea's pattern is similar to that which might have obtained in China if the level of
discrimination in the latter had not been raised so much by decades of war till 1949. South Korea
had some surplus of women for men born in 1935-59, though the surplus is very small compared to
India. The costs of marriage seem to have been quite low. As one woman put it, exaggerating a
little to make her point:
"All we took with us to our husband's home was our bodies23"
There was no shift towards the bride's family making larger net payments for marriage than the
groom's family, which is consistent with the fact that spousal availability was not strongly
imbalanced. In interviews, it was widely reported that it was common in the past for men to take a
mistress if their wife did not have a son. This may have been made easier by having some surplus of
women. The numbers of potential mistresses would also be increased by the ranks of abandoned
wives, and by the fact that a woman could have more than one "master" sequentially. In China
adoption (preferably within the lineage) was the usual solution to this problem, not concubinage,
and this may well be related to the shortage of women there.
We have yet to see what will happen in South Korea with the large shortage of women they are
about to experience. The country is now rich enough to be able to resolve some of this problem by
importing wives from Manchuria and overseas. Being a relatively small country makes this easier
to do: a country the size of China could never hope to emulate this example. Besides, it is now a
highly urbanized country in which law enforcement is centralized. This is in contrast to the
decentralized administration of largely rural China, where there is vast potential for hiding women
21 Zhung Guo Fu Nu August 1995 (in Chinese). The article mentions that since this particular case was publicized by some
journalists, county-level officials took an interest in the case and saw to it that she could keep her land.
22 Zhang and Yin (1994), and Arthur Wolf (personal comnmunication).
23 Interview conducted by Monica Das Gupta and Bae Hwa-Ok in 1996.
16



away in tightly-knit rural communities. Thus it is unlikely that the shortage of women in South
Korea will lead to obtaining women by violent means.
Being in short supply does not seem to alter women's status and autonomy. These are determined
by her position within the family and society, and can only be altered by efforts to alter the position
of women in the family and society. China and North India are characterized by especially low
autonomy of young women (Das Gupta 1995b). However, it is likely that women are more subject
to general abuse when it is easy to obtain another wife: this supply factor adds to the existing
imbalance of power between husband and wife. This intuitively plausible statement is consistent
with widespread perception in India that dowry violence is rising, but there is no hard data on trends
in such stress. The logic of our hypothesis, however, is consistent with the argument that a scarcity
of women will raise their value but not their status in societies characterized by strong gender
inequality in power (Pisani and Zaba 1995, Guttentag and Secord 1983). Their value may rise when
they are in short supply because families may make more effort to ensure that they do not lose a
wife, but this may not be accompanied by a rise in women's status as reflected in greater decision-
making power within the household.
Who is squeezed?: poverty and the marriage squeeze:
It is largely the poor who suffer from the shortage of spouses. When there is a surplus of women,
poor families are hardest pressed to find the wherewithal to marry off their daughters. Sometimes
their daughters are forced to marry men who may be disabled or older widowers. When there is a
shortage of women, it is poor men who are unable to find spouses. Wealthier men make more
attractive partners, and manage to obtain wives one way or another. A saying in China refers to the
marriage migration of women from poorer hill areas to richer plains areas:
"Women, like water, flow down the hill"
In families with more than one son, the eldest son has a very high probability of being married, but
if the family is under economic stress it is less likely to marry off younger sons. In fact, not letting
some sons marry was one strategy for less affluent households to reduce subdivision of property
and preserve resources for the following generation of the household (Das Gupta 1995a).
That the burden of the shortage falls on the poor and on younger sons is evident from genealogical
data collected in Northwest India (Das Gupta 1995a) and in Northeast China (Lee and Campbell
1997). It is also apparent in survey data collected in 1933 in Jiangsu, China (Li and Lavely 1995).
Across North India it was common for poorer men of the Rajput caste not to marry, since they
practise strong discrimination against girls (Census of India 1931), and this helped households
maintain a balance between their numbers and their resources. In China today the shortage of
women has become unusually acute because of the combined pressure of declining cohort size and
discrimination. It is especially difficult for men in poorer areas of China to find wives because even
if they are able to put together a large sum for buying a bride, local women prefer to marry into a
richer region. The desperation to find wives in China has already led to a situation in which people
resort to buying women from kidnappers.
VI   CONCLUSIONS
China, South Korea and Northern India have commonalities in their kinship systems, which make
17



for discrimination against female children. The extent to which this discrimination is manifested
increased during periods of war, famine and fertility decline. Of the three countries, India has had
the quietest history during the period we consider. South Korea is next, with one period of massive
disruption during the Korean War, which led to a rise in discrimination. China has experienced the
most crises: during the first half of this century, civil war and invasion in China led to an enormous
amount of disruption, followed more recently by the famine of 1959-61. These events are reflected
in sharp rises in the proportion of girls "missing" in China.
As a result, there is a sharp contrast between China and India in the history of spousal availability.
In China there has been a surplus of men in the marriage market throughout this period. The extent
of discrimination offsets the expected tendency to have a surplus of women when men are marrying
into younger cohorts which are larger than their own because of improvements in child survival.
With its quieter history, India has conformed more to the expected pattern, shifting from a surplus
of men to a surplus of women with the advent of steady mortality decline. These demographic shifts
seem to have affected marriage payments in these countries.
Our findings are consistent with Caldwell et al.'s (1983) hypothesis that there has been a shiftover
from brideprice to dowry in India because of a shift to a surplus of women. Alternative ways of
resolving this imbalance, for example by having women remain unmarried or marry significantly
younger men, were not culturally acceptable. We extend this argument to hypothesize that
brideprice continues to be practised in China because of the continuing shortage of women.
There are a number of other social implications of demographic shifts during this century. It is
likely that the reduction in the average age gap between spouses in all three countries during this
period is at least partly a response to the marriage squeeze, as this reduces imbalances in spousal
availability. Ceteris paribus, this should make for greater equality of power between spouses in
these societies. There are also implications for the survival of different strata of the population:
when there is a shortage of women, it is typically the poor who do not marry, as richer men make
more attractive spouses. To some extent, this arises out of conscious household strategy: when
times are hard for a household, younger sons may be required to remain single in order to conserve
family resources.
In the societies we have examined here, wvhich are characterized by strong son preference, fertility
decline has made for a surplus of men not only because it leads to shrinking cohort sizes but also
because it has led to increased discrimination against girls. China and South Korea will soon
experience the maximum shortage of women in the marriage market, with substantial proportions
of men unable to find a wife. In the case of India, the surplus of women will soon be replaced by a
surplus of men. We hypothesize that as a consequence dowry inflation will taper off, along with
dowry violence and some other aspects of ill-treatment of women. It is ironic that an increase of
discrimination against girls may help reduce dowry pressures and thereby indirectly reduce the
extent of violence against women.
One interesting question is whether the situation of women is improved when they are in short
supply. Clearly being in substantial surplus is the worst scenario for women, in terms of the
suffering of the great majority of women. Having to pay dowries makes parents less willing to have
daughters, and husbands more prone to dowry-related harassment and violence. Moreover, the
18



power imbalance between the sexes is worsened by the fact that it is easy for men to find another
woman if necessary. When there was a small surplus of women in South Korea, women who were
unable to fulfil obligations such as bearing sons were harassed by the possibility of their husbands
taking concubines.
When women are in short supply, the daily lives of the majority of women are considerably
improved because men are inclined to be more careful not to lose their wife. At the same time, a
small proportion of women may be subject to new types of violence related to shortage of wives.
For example in China, some women are kidnapped and sold into marriage to men desperate to
obtain a wife. Even if these women succeed in escaping and returning home, there are serious
obstacles to their re-integration in their earlier life whether in their husband's home or their parents'
home. It seems that although the treatment of women improves when they are in shortage, their
autonomy can only be increased by fundamental changes in their position in the family and society.
Fortunately, such changes are taking place in these societies, albeit slowly.
19



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APPENDIX ON METHODOLOGY
The Chinese censuses pose two potential problems for our analysis. The first relates to the ages of military
personnel. These are not reported in the 1953 and 1964 censuses, and are listed in five-year age groups in
the 1982 census and in single-year age groups in the 1990 census. This affects our analysis because most of
the military personnel are male and so the estimated sex ratios are affected. Coale and Banister (1994) found
a way of resolving this problem, and we have used the same approach, which we describe below. The
second is the possible underreporting of female births and very young girls in the 1982 and 1990 censuses.
However, there is far less underreporting of very young girls than of female births (Zeng et al.1993). Since
our analysis focuses on young surviving children, it may not be affected much by under-reporting.
Method of estimating proportions of girls missing:
To illustrate how we used Coale and Banister's (1994) methodology to estimate the proportion of girls
missing for each five-year birth cohort at census time, we show how we applied it to the data from China.
First we calculated the sex ratios of each birth cohort, as they were recorded at each census (1953, 1964,
1982 and 1990). Then, following Coale and Banister's method, we adjusted for the omission of military
personnel by using for cohorts aged 16-34 the highest ratio recorded in any census. The logic of this is that
the sex ratios of these ages would be more accurately captured by the previous census, when these people
would have been too young to join the army, or the following census, when they left the army. Differential
mortality at these young ages is very low, and will have little effect on the analysis.
Thus, corresponding to each of the four censuses, we obtained sex ratio curves for each birth cohort (Figure
4). The female life expectancy used to fit the model life tables are shown in Table 4. The four curves are
quite consistent because the high quality of age-reporting. The only exception are the early birth cohorts,
which show a difference in different censuses. This reflects the natural biological female advantage in
survival, as these early birth cohorts are exposed to mortality over a long duration, so the later the census is
taken, the more feminine the observed sex ratio.
In our final analysis, we use the most recent data on each birth cohort, to obtain one combined observed sex
ratio curve from the four censuses. Thus the 1953 census data are used for the period 1920-24 to 1948-52,
the 1964 data for the period 1949-53 to 1959-63, and so on. This is easily done since the four curves are so
consistent. This makes it possible to focus more on the impact of historical events on discrimination in
childhood. It also minimizes the problem of model assumptions about the sex differentials in mortality over
the life span.
We derive the curve of the model sex ratios in the same way, combining curves into one combined model
sex ratio curve for the most recent cohorts for each five-year birth cohort at census time (Figure 4). The
excess sex ratio for each five-year birth cohort at census time is derived by comparing the observed sex ratio
to the model one, minus 1.0.
To estimate the excess sex ratios for the 1986-90 to 1990-94 birth cohorts in China, we use data from the
1995 One Percent National Population Survey. Since the model sex ratios are not very sensitive to small
changes in life expectancy and life expectancy was already very high in China by 1990, the model sex ratios
for 1986-90 to 1990-94 birth cohorts are assumed to be the same for the 1980-84 to 1985-89 birth cohorts in
the 1990 census.
27



Figure 1 Excess sex ratios at census time by 5 year birth
cohorts, 1920-1995, China and South Korea
0.2
internal
0.1                                                            Fertility
Japanese              Famine                 Decline
0.05 -             invaio
0
-0.05
Korean                     Fertility
War                         Decline
-0.15
19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19
20 23 26 29 32 35 38 41 44 47 50 53 56 59 62 65 68 71 74 77 80 83 86 89
First year of 5 year period of birth
Note: The excess ratios peak amongst cohorts born just before a war or famine, because those who were young girls
at the time of the crisis experienced the maximum excess mortality.
Sources: China, calculation based on data from 1953, 1964, 1982 and 1990 Population Censuses of China.
See Department of Population Statistics, SSB, 1988, China Population Yearbook 1988; 1985,
1982 Population Census of China; 1993, Tabulation of the 1990 Population Census of China;
1997, Tabulation of the 1995 National One Percent Sample Survey.
S. Korea, calculation based on data from 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990 Population Censuses of
Korea. See Economic Planning Board, Population and Housing Census, 1960, 1970;
National Bureau of Statistics and Economic Planning Board, Population and Housing Census,
1980, 1990.
28



Figure 2 Juvenile (0-4 year) sex ratios in China, South
Korea, India and Punjab, 1 950s-90s
1.2
1.15-                                                       91
1.05
0.95
0.85
China               S. Korea              India            Punjab+Haryana
Sources: China, computed from 1953, 1964, 1982 and 1990 Population Censuses of China, and
1995 National 1% Population Sample Survey of China (see notes to Figure 1).
S. Korea, computed from 1949, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 1995 Population and
Housing Censuses of Korea (see notes to Figure 1).
India and Punjab, computed from 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981 and 1991 Population
Censuses of India. See Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India,
1951-1991.
*: The 1991 figure is the sex ratio of 0-6.
Note: The census year is indicated above each bar.
29



Figure 3 Total fertility rate of China, South Korea and
India, 1960-1990
7
6
S                \ \
4
A  China
3
-0 --S. Korea
2
-I--India
1960       1965        1970        1975       1980        1985        1990
Year
Source: China, Yao Xinwu and Yin Hua, 1994, Basic Data of China's Population, p. 144.
S. Korea, Hung-Tak Lee and Nam-Hoon Cho, 1992.
India, Sample registration system, 1970-1990.
30



Figure 4 Estimated and model sex ratios at census timc
by 5 year birth cohorts, 1920-1995, China
1.2
1.15                    +-
-Model
++ --~~~~~~+  *                                          -:~~~~~~_- 1953
-X- 1964
1.1                                                                                      -I--- _ ---- 8 f  ,1982
-1990
1.05
0.95       ................  ......             .........................
19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19
20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84
First year of 5 year period of birth
Sources:
Estimated sex ratios: Calculation based on data from 1953, 1964, 1982 and 1990 Population Censuses of
China, and 1995 National One Percent Sample Survey of China. See notes to Figure
1 .
Model sex ratios: Coale and Banister (1994).
31



Table 1 Singulate mean age at first marriage in population censuses in China,
South Korea and India, 1910s-90s
China                  S. Korea                     India
-----------------------------------------------------------------__----------_
Year  Male  Female Gap     Year   Male Female Gap      Year   Male Female Gap
1911   19.8  12.9  6.9
1925   21.1  16.6  4.5     1921   20.2  13.3  6.9
1930   21.2  16.8  4.4     1931   19.0  12.9  6.1
1935   21.4  17.1  4.3
1940   21.8  17.8  4.0
1953               3.4*    1955   24.7  20.5  4.2      1951   20.6  15.2  5.4
1960   25.4  21.5  3.9     1961   21.6  15.9  5.7
1964               3.1*    1966   26.7  22.9  3.8
1970   23.1  20.4  2.7     1970   27.2  23.3  3.9      1971   22.4  17.2  5.2
1975   24.4  22.0  2.4     1975   27.4  23.6  3.8
1980   25.0  22.9  2.1     1980   27.3  24.1  3.2      1981   23.3  18.3  5.0
1982   25.1  22.4  2.7
1985   23.6  21.8  1.8     1985   27.8  24.8  3.0
1990   23.8  22.1  1.7     1990   28.6  25.5  3.1      1991   24.2  20.0  4.2
--------------------------------------------------------------------__-------
Source: For China, estimates for 1953, 1964 and 1990 are based on the 1990
Population Census, for 1982 based on the 1982 Population Census, for
1970, 75, 80 and 85 based on the 1988 National 2 Per Thousand
Fertility and Contraceptive Survey;
For Korea, from 1925-1970 based on Kwon et al.(1975), from 1975-1990
based on National Statistics Office of Korea(1993);
For India, based on Mari Bhat and Halli (1997).
*: Figures for 1953 and 1964 of China are respectively estimated from the age
gap of currently married couples for cohorts born in 1925-29 and 1940-44 in
the 1990 census of China. Because of the data tabulation feature, the
numbers are somewhat underestimated due to the data tabulation feature.
32



Table 2 Observed ratios of males to younger
females by five year male birth cohort,
China, South Korea, India, 1920-1989
-------------------------------------------------
Male
birth
cohorts      China    S. Korea       India
-------------------------------------------------
1920-24       1.01                    0.87
1925-29       1.00                    0.91
1930-34       1.07                    0.93
1935-39       1.15        0.99        0.92
1940-44       1.05        0.92        0.89
1945-49       0.97        0.96        0.88
1950-54       1.03        0.79        0.91
1955-59       1.23        1.01        0.91
1960-64       0.89        1.05        0.94
1965-69       1.04        1.03        0.98
1970-74       1.17        1.16        0.97
1975-79       1.07        1.02        0.99
1980-84       1.03        1.25        1.06
1985-89       1.12*       1.07**
--------------------------------------------------
Source: Computed from Population Censuses of China,
S. Korea, and India.
*: Calculation based on data from the 1990 Population Census and Annual
Population Change Surveys in China.
**: Calculation based on Vital Statistics in South Korea.
33



Table 3 The breakdown of the ratios of males to younger females by five year
male birth cohort, China, South Korea, India, 1960-1989
------------------------------------------------------------__---------------
Male             China                    S. Korea                   India
Birth   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cohorts Obser.  Normal  Dif.      Obser.  Normal  Dif.    Obser.  Normal  Dif.
1960-64  0.89    0.86   0.03       1.05    1.05   0.01      0.94    0.95   0.00
1965-69  1.04    1.02   0.02       1.03    1.01   0.02      0.98    0.93   0.05
1970-74  1.17    1.14   0.03       1.16    1.15   0.01      0.97    0.90   0.08
1975-79  1.07    1.04   0.03       1.02    1.00   0.02      0.99    0.94   0.05
1980-84  1.03    0.99   0.04       1.25    1.19   0.06      1.06    1.05   0.01
1985-89* 1.12    1.05   0.07       1.07    1.00   0.07
-------------------------------------------------------------------__--------
Source: Computed from Population Censuses of China and S. Korea, and India.
Note: Figures for 1985-89 are based on data from the 1990 Population Census
and Annul Population Change Surveys in China and Vital Statistics in
South Korea.
Table 4 Estimated female life expectancy at birth in China,
South Korea and India
-------------------------------------------------------------------__---
Year              China              S. Korea             India
1900s              25.0                25.0*              25.0*
1910s              25.0                30.0*              25.0*
1920s              25.0                35.0               30.0
1930s              25.0                40.0               30.0
1940s              32.5                45.0               32.0
1950s              45.0                50.0               37.0
1960s              52.5                55.0               45.3
1970s              62.5                68.0               52.0
1980s              70.0                72.0               57.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------__----
Sources: For China, Coale and Banister (1994);
For South Korea, Kwon (1977), National Statistics Office of Korea
(1993);
For India, Mari Bhat (1989), Registrar General of India (1985, 1995).
: Since the estimates are not available for South Korea and India before
1920, we assume these figures for these two decades.
34



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