Does a legal ban on sex-selective abortions improve child sex ratios? Evidence from a policy change in India

Nandi, Arindam; Deolalikar, Anil B.

doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2013.02.007

Cited by 61 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…One common problem of a multi-state treatment-effect analysis is the heterogeneity of the pre-treated and newly-treated groups (Nandi and Deolalikar, 2013;Bertrand et al, 2004). States in India are different from each other in many respects.…”

Section: Econometric Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is more inclusive more effective? The ‘New Style’ public distribution system in India

Kishore¹,

Chakrabarti²

2015

Food Policy

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Section: Econometric Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still, the problem of imperfect controls remains. Kaushal and Muchomba (2013) and Nandi and Deolalikar (2013) are other recent papers that have used similar econometric strategy to exploit interstate differences in social policies in India to measure their impact on households.…”

Section: Econometric Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Is more inclusive more effective? The ‘New Style’ public distribution system in India

Kishore¹,

Chakrabarti²

2015

Food Policy

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“…Finally, we make a contribution to a literature that studies the welfare implications of government bans as a policy instrument to change health-related behavior. See for example Nandi and Deolalikar (2013) who study the effect of a law banning sex-selective abortions in India, and Adda and Cornaglia (2010) who study the effect of smoking bans.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does a ban on informal health providers save lives? Evidence from Malawi

Godlonton

Okeke

2016

Journal of Development Economics

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Informal health providers ranging from drug vendors to traditional healers account for a large fraction of health care provision in developing countries. They are, however, largely unlicensed and unregulated leading to concern that they provide ineffective and, in some cases, even harmful care. A new and controversial policy tool that has been proposed to alter household health seeking behavior is an outright ban on these informal providers. The theoretical effects of such a ban are ambiguous. In this paper, we study the effect of a ban on informal (traditional) birth attendants imposed by the Malawi government in 2007. To measure the effect of the ban, we use a difference-in-difference strategy exploiting variation across time and space in the intensity of exposure to the ban. Our most conservative estimates suggest that the ban decreased use of traditional attendants by about 15 percentage points. Approximately three quarters of this decline can be attributed to an increase in use of the formal sector and the remainder is accounted for by an increase in relative/friend-attended births. Despite the rather large shift from the informal to the formal sector, we do not find any evidence of a statistically significant reduction in newborn mortality on average. The results are robust to a triple difference specification using young children as a control group. We examine several explanations for this result and find evidence consistent with quality of formal care acting as a constraint on improvements in newborn health.

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“…For the state of Maharashtra, the ban on prenatal sex selection was implemented in 1988, nearly a decade before the passage of the national PNDT Act. This allows Nandi and Deolalikar (2013) to use Maharashtra as the pre-treated or control state that is not affected by the national ban. They conduct a difference-in-difference analysis that compares the difference in child sex ratios between Maharashtra and its neighboring states before and after the passage of the PNDT Act.…”

Section: Indiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventing More “Missing Girls”: A Review of Policies to Tackle Son Preference

Kumar

Sinha

2019

The World Bank Research Observer

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In parts of Asia, the South Caucasus, and the Balkans, son preference is strong enough to trigger significant levels of sex selection, resulting in the excess mortality of girls and skewing child sex ratios in favor of boys. Every year, an estimated 1.8 million girls go “missing” because of the widespread use of sex selective practices in these regions. The pervasive use of such practices is reflective of the striking inequities girls face immediately, and it also has possible negative implications for efforts to improve women's status in the long term. Recognizing this as a public policy concern, governments have employed direct measures such as banning the use of prenatal sex selection technology, and providing financial incentives to families that have girls. This study reviews cross-country experiences to take stock of the direct interventions used and finds no conclusive evidence that they are effective in reducing the higher mortality risk for girls. In fact, bans on the use of sex selection technology may inadvertently worsen the status of the very individuals they intend to protect, and financial incentives to families with girls offer only short-term benefits at most. Instead, what seems to work are policies that indirectly raise the value of daughters. The study also underscores the paucity of causal studies in this literature.

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Does a legal ban on sex-selective abortions improve child sex ratios? Evidence from a policy change in India

Cited by 61 publications

References 40 publications

Is more inclusive more effective? The ‘New Style’ public distribution system in India

Is more inclusive more effective? The ‘New Style’ public distribution system in India

Does a ban on informal health providers save lives? Evidence from Malawi

Preventing More “Missing Girls”: A Review of Policies to Tackle Son Preference

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