(predominantly Sikh and Hindu) have a tiny share of Muslims (Drèze and Sen,
1995:ch7). Predominantly Islamic Bangladesh has witnessed a sharp reduc-
tion in fertility levels, a surge in female wage employment outside the house-
hold, and declining male/female ratios over the last twenty years (Kabeer and
Mahmud, 2004).
While povertymay contribute to the phenomenon of missing women, it is
insufficient to explain the adverse sex ratio trends in South Asia. In India there
has been steady economic growth throughout the twentieth century, and
poverty has steadily declined from the 1970s/1980s onwards, but the
male/female ratio has consistently risen. Village-based field work consistently
shows a negative relation between wealth/income and chance of survival for
females in South Asia (Sen and Sengupta, 1983; Krishnaji, 1987; Vlassoff,
1991; Agnihotri, 2000; Jejeebhoy and Sathar, 2001; Harris-White, 2001). In
some exclusive Delhi neighbourhoods – the boy/girl ratio is 1.256 (Manhoff,
2005:902). According to the 2001 census, the Punjab had the most abnormal
sex ratios of any state in India, despite being among the most developed states
(Kurian, 2000), with very low levels of extreme poverty (Shergill and Singh,
1995). In China and South Korea rising sex ratios have been associated with
rapid economic growth and declining poverty.
In general,rising incomesare associated with development. The status of
women is often assumed to improv e with development,but cultural factors
may intervene. Sanskritization refers to the practice in India of adopting high-
caste cultural norms. These norms include the prohibition of widow remar-
riage,the adoption of a vegetarian diet, purdah (the withdrawal of women from
paid employment outside the home),and dowry payment at marriage. With
rising household incomes and falling poverty in India after the 1980s, low-
caste households have been able to afford these high-caste norms. This has
increased the economic burden of women upon the household, as they are
withdrawn from wage labour and require dowry payments. There is good long-
term evidence of this process in India. During the twentieth century,
male–female ratios among low-caste groups converged with those of high-
caste groups, as the low castes adopted adverse high-caste norms (Drèze and
Sen,1995). Economic development,improved communications and the spread
of aspirational-celebrity media seem to be increasing the speed of diffusion of
these Sanskritic norms from the north to the south and from high- to low-caste
groups of India (Rajan et al., 2000). Marriage is almost universal for women in
South Asia and the bride is expected to bring a dowry. Although dowry
demands are illegal in India, the law is seldom enforced (Ulrich, 1989; Vaz and
Kanekar, 1990). Dowry has spread into southern India, where bride-price used
to be the tradition (Heyer, 1992; Rahman and Rao, 2004). A common excuse
for dowry is that it compensates the groom’s family for a non-working wife
who won’t contribute to household income. If this were the case, we would
expect to see an inverse relationship between female earnings potential (partic-
ipation in the labour force or level of education) and dowry levels. In fact the
exact opposite is true. In general as the earnings potential of a woman
94 Sources of Growth in the Modern World Economy since 1950