Family Structure and Declining Sex Ratios in Rural India

This article builds on the recognizition that the declining child sex ratios in rural India are a result of an ongoing process of social change. It looks at areas both in the north and in the south which have shown significant decline in the child sex ratio between 1991 and 2001. In order to understand why the lives of female children are at risk and why there is an increasing discrimination against girls in India it is particularily important to consider the inter-househols allocation of resources. For this Amartya Sen's Gender and cooperative conflict model is being used