What Soil Can Tell Us About Sex Deficits

Soil can help explain child sex ratios in rural areas of India, argued Eliana Carranza, Technical Advisor at the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, in this week’s WAPPP seminar, “Soil Endowments, Female Labor Force Participation and the Demographic Deficit of Women in India.”

Sex ratios – defined in the world of demography as the ratio of females to males in a population – are typically split with the number of females and males. Variations in ratio are often visible by age group, but the biggest variation in sex ratios is actually seen via geography. For example, a few countries in the Middle East and South Asia show a distinct and persistent deficit of women, including India.

The World Bank study that Carranza presented was recently published in the American Economic Journal and argues that child sex ratios in rural India can be explained by differences in soil texture. Carranza argued that these ratios are affected by women’s employment opportunities in agriculture, which vary across different kinds of soil.

This is because the soil texture in a certain region determines the depth of land preparation required to produce a crop there. Deep tillage, which reduces the need for labor in female-dominated tasks such as transplanting, fertilizing and weeding, is only possible in loamy soil textures. Therefore, districts with larger fractions of loamy soils exhibit lower rates of female participation in agriculture. The lower demand for female labor reduces the economic value of girls to a household, leading to lower ratios of female to male children.

The study sees a significant effect of soil texture on agricultural workers' opportunities, which disproportionately affects women. There is not the same effect on the overall male population, since men have other types of employment opportunities, while there are no real alternatives available for women in these regions.

The study found that an additional 10 percentage points in the share of female agricultural laborers in the rural work force is estimated to increase the relative number of rural 0-to-6 year olds by 44 girls per 1000 boys. This would bring the sex ration from an average ratio of 925 to 969, which is above the natural outcome for children of that age. The deficit of girls could be erased by a less extreme 5.8 percentage point increase in share of female laborers in rural workforce.

Carranza's policy prescription is relatively simple: provide more economic opportunities specifically for women. Previous studies show that increasing income is not enough to close the gender gap, and neither is creating more employment opportunities overall. In regions dominated by non-equalitarian perceptions regarding the role and value of women, women’s employment opportunities have even greater influence on labor force participation, which in turn affects child sex ratios.

Photo Source: The World Bank

How Are Women Doing? The World Bank Weighs in on Gender & Development - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Men: Sudhir Shetty, Sector Manager, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, The World Bank; and Jishnu Das, Senior Economist in the Development Research Group, The World Bank

The Talk: World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development

The Question: Are women better or worst off than they've been in previous decades?

Not all inequalities are created equal.

At least, that's what researchers at the World Bank have concluded with the release of this year's Gender Development Gap report.

Sudhir Shetty and Jishnu Das, two economists who worked on the report, were on hand at WAPPP to present the latest findings to the Women's Leadership Board at WAPPP on how women have progressed around the world in the past few decades.

The results are positive, but reveal that there's still a long way to go.

While some areas such as education have improved dramatically, researchers says, inequality stubbornly persists in areas such as maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS infection, the wage gap, and domestic violence.

The reason, say Shetty and Das, is a complex interaction between markets, households and formal institutions that must all work together in order to ensure women are supported by every aspect of society.

For instance, curbing female mortality necessitates deep political will on the part of the government to reform its institutions. "I have never been to a district hospital in India where a doctor is not drunk after 8 o'clock," says Das. "The institutions are just not working, and these are the problems that effect female mortality."

The researchers say that there are ways to tackle these challenges. To reduce female mortality, for instance, countries must concentrate on improving clean water and sanitation so that infant girls stand a better chance of survival. A look at the historical data in the US and Europe revealed telling data to the team: as access to clean water improved at the turn of the 20th century, so too did the survival of baby girls.

Some challenges like domestic abuse, however, require a far more complex approach. Political will must drive an agenda that prioritizes the well-being of women and their children; economic opportunities such as access to land, better infrastructure, and greater emphasis on child care can all contribute to a shifting climate that empowers women within their households and in society. Buy-in from men is also a critical aspect in reducing domestic violence; as Shetty says: "This report is about gender -- not just women."

*Photo Image Courtesy of World Bank
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.