Talk:Missing women

Nearly orphaned

At the moment, the only articles that link to this article are Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide, Emily Oster, Amartya Sen, and Human sex ratio. There are doubtless more articles that could link here, so please help de-orphan the article! +Angr 05:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Added a few more links. There's information on this scattered throughout several articles. Part of the purpose here is to have a central article just on this phenomenon and to focus on the research. I also hope to get some graphs going but that'll have to wait a few days.radek (talk) 06:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Dead link

The link to http://0090224084450/Rendered/PDF/WPS4846.pdf in ref #11 is dead. Since you didn't give a full citation with reference information, I don't know how to find what it's supposed to be. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 12:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Solved. Bastin 13:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing women due to toxoplasmosis?

"Czech parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr has found that latent toxoplasmosis infection of mothers can change sex ratio up to 2.6 males per female born.[15] This could, at least partly, explain the phenomenon of missing women."

You're not serious about that, are you?

May I qoute from the article on toxoplasmosis:

"It is estimated that between 30% and 65% of all people worldwide are infected with toxoplasmosis.[42] However, there is large variation between countries: in France, for example, around 88% of the population are carriers, probably due to a high consumption of raw and lightly cooked meat. [43] Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil also have high prevalences of around 80%, over 80%[44] and 67% respectively. In Britain about 22% are carriers, and South Korea's rate is 4.3%.[25]"

So only 4.3% of the population in South-Korea are carriers of toxoplasmosis, and yet South-Korea is among those Asian countries with a significant percentage of missing women. On the other hand in France, Brazil, Germany have 80% or more of the population is a carrier of toxoplasmosis, and yet a problem of "missing women" is not heard of in those countries.

So the "toxoplasmosis-leads-to-missing-theory" is obviously nonsense and I suggest it to be removed from the article.--213.196.250.2 (talk) 06:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC) Robert

Underreporting

Parts of this article make it sound as if there are only two explanations competing in this question (Sen's argument about family planning, and Oster's about hep B), and as if the only ways family planning affects the gender disparity is through getting people to kill girls (infanticide, sex-selective abortion, or malnutrition). Another potential explanation that has been proposed, though, is that female births are simply not reported, but the girls are still raised and taken care of. See, for instance:

• Zeng Yi et al., "Causes and Implications of the Recent Increase in the Reported Sex Ratio at Birth in China," Population and Development Review, 19: 2 [June 1993]. (summarized here if you don't have access)
• Merli, M. Giovanna; Rafferty, Adrian E. "Are Births Underreported in Rural China? Manipulation of Statistical Records in Response to China's Population Policies". Demography, 37: 1 (Feb., 2000)
• Merli, M. Giovanna. "Underreporting of Births and Infant Deaths in Rural China: Evidence from Field Research in One County of Northern China". The China Quarterly 155 (1998).

This should probably be worked into the article. Most of the above sources (as well as a forthcoming one by an old professor of mine, which makes the argument that underreporting is the main explanation for missing girls) present the three main competing explanations as underreporting, sex-selective abortion, and infanticide. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:47, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Lede

The edit warring between 79.97.171.208 and Halaqah needs to stop. Undoing one another back and forth ([1][2]) is not an appropriate way to resolve a content dispute. Both of you please discuss your disagreement here and we will work out a consensus. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not a content dispute. We have a content dispute at slavery in modern africa. After that started (s)he began wikistalking me, undoing my edits and calling all of them vandalism. 79.97.171.208 (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)