Theo_Fidel wrote:I don't always read the racist rag but bit of OT but important news. Our sex ratio is skewing back to normal at a rapid rate. I blame TV.
#1 social reform tool.
http://www.economist.com/node/21542208
A glimmer of hope in the sad tale of sex-selective abortion in India
Now, however, comes evidence that India may in fact be succeeding. In a pair of articles in the Indian Express, Surjit Bhalla, an economist, and Ravinder Kaur, a sociologist, use a different set of figures to get a different result. On the basis of the national sample surveys (NSS), they calculate that India’s sex ratio at birth swung from 924 females per 1,000 males in 2004-05 to 977 in 2011, a stunning turnaround in favour of girls.
The NSS figure is not comparable to the census. It shows the sex ratio at birth, whereas the census shows the ratio for children aged 0-6 (census figures for the sex ratio at birth have not been published). But there are reasons for thinking the NSS is reliable. The sample size, of 125,000 households, is large. And when the NSS does produce figures comparable to the census, they closely match it (for example, the NSS and census figures for the child sex ratio in 2001 and 2011 are almost identical). The new figure represents a very big change. A sex ratio of 977 girls to 1,000 boys is closer to what prevailed in the 1960s than it is to more recent decades.
So it is possible that the sex ratio has begun to change recently in ways not captured by the census. If so, why? Mr Bhalla and Ms Kaur pin the explanation squarely on the behaviour of parts of India’s middle class. What they call the mature middle class, those with an annual income of 170,000 rupees ($3,200) for a family of five, no longer practises sex selection. Ms Kaur’s research in five Indian states finds that richer middle-class families are no longer using sons as vehicles for upward mobility. A combination of female education, the spread of “modern” social attitudes through television, government policies and a dawning sense that daughters are more likely than sons to look after parents in old age are all having a cumulative effect. This is persuading the richer parts of the middle class that girls are as valuable as boys. The authors reckon this slice of the population has almost doubled in size in six years, from 27% in 2005 to 50% in 2011, so its preferences explain the change in the figures.
The argument might seem to contradict the view that sex selection rises as people get richer. In fact, at slightly lower levels of income, the link is as strong as ever. Mr Bhalla and Ms Kaur find sex selection has run rampant among what they call the emerging middle classes—those with an income of 90,000-170,000 rupees a year. But since this group has declined as a share of the population, from 68% in 2000 to 41% now, their preferences have a smaller impact.
Monica Das Gupta of the World Bank points out that the 2011 census shows the sex ratio is beginning to return to normal in Punjab and Haryana, states where sex-selective abortion used to be common, but which now report big changes in attitudes to girls.
Meanwhile, these states need to get their collective asses in gear. Shameful, everyone of them. Esp. the new offenders. 
Meanwhile, in nearby Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, the sex ratio is getting worse. These are states with more of the emerging middle classes. Because there are many such states and some, like Uttar Pradesh, are huge, they explain why the national child sex ratio became more distorted in 2001-11.
The real news, aside from the welcome improvement in the sex ratio, that I take from this is that the household income distribution is:
9%ile = Rs. 90000
50%ile = Rs. 170000
In contrast, the consumption levels reported in the 66th round NSSO CES are (at 2009-10 prices):
10%ile ~ Rs. 31000
50%ile ~ Rs. 54000
With a 25% household savings rate, that implies a reported income of:
10%ile ~ Rs. 40000
50%ile ~ Rs. 70000
Even assuming that there has been 20% inflation since 2009-10 still puts the reported income at:
10%ile ~ Rs. 50000
50%ile ~ Rs. 85000
If I am interpreting these results correctly, unless these households are engaging in significant non-consumption expenditures that are not considered savings (although I was under the impression that such a thing was impossible by tautology), the household income numbers in these reports are inconsistent by at least factor of 2. Since, IIRC, the 90k and 170k numbers come from Kinsey Consulting, who did their own assessment of income levels, I would be inclined to believe a 50% under-reporting to NSSO, but it is possible that this is not the case. This has important implications for GDP estimation, since, if the under-reporting is really a factor of 2 in the informal sector, the actual GDP per capita is ~35% higher (since the informal sector produces ~70% of the output) even without any under-reporting in the formal sector. It also has important implications for poverty estimations:
The Tendulkar Commission's definition of the poverty line (i.e. enough that one could to afford, if one were so inclined, to purchase the basic level of every category of consumption at normal prices) was Rs 19.02 per capita per diem in urban areas and Rs 14.68 per capita per diem in rural areas at 2004-05 prices. Since the price level in 2011 as measured in the basket of everything produced in India (i.e. the GDP deflator) has increased by 56.37% relative to that base year, we can estimate the current price of the poverty line basket (PLB) to be Rs 30 per capita per diem in urban areas and Rs 23 per capita per diem in rural areas. Rs. 30 per capita per diem is Rs. 11000 per capita per annum and Rs. 23 per capita per diem is Rs. 8400 per capita per annum. Assuming a 5 member household, Rs. 11000 per capita is a household consumption level of Rs. 55000 and Rs. 8400 per capita is a household consumption level of Rs. 42000. So, if we believe Kinsey over NSSO, and assuming that the inflation in the PLB has been ~the same as the GDP deflator, although this assumption was incorrect enough that the bulk of the actual Commission report is spent explaining an alternate methodology to measure inflation in the PLB, the actual fraction of the population living in households that cannot afford the PLB is significantly less than 9%.
. India IMR as per the recently released stats was 47 in 2010. I am hopeful that CIA is similarly underestimating the defence programs.
