Since the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and the Beijing Conference on

Women and the Girl Child in 1995, gender equality has been a priority area of demographic research. In the South Asian context, researchers have estimated that there are mil-lions of women “missing ” from the population, leading to an unusually high ratio of males to females.1 Failure to re-port the birth of girls, sex-selective abortion, neglect of daughters and female infanticide may all play a role. In some countries with a strong sex preference, couples stop having children only when they are satisfied with the sex composition of their family2—typically, after the birth of a son. Consequently, the sex ratio of last-born children (sex ratio at last birth) can be much higher than the bio-logical constant of 106 sons per 100 daughters ever born (sex ratio at birth). For example, in Punjab, a region in Northwest India known to have high levels of gender bias,