The death rates for sex and age groups for eleven villages in the Punjab, July to December 1959, from the Khanna study are shown below. (Visaria)

In a normal population, the death rates for males and females would be very similar and the ratios in the last columns would be close to one. Male death rate in the 0-14 age group would be a little higher than female.

A larger sample from the National Sample Survey, July 1958 to July 1959 taken in the Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi (Visaria) also displays the high girl child death rates characteristic of fatal daughter syndrome.

The reader may have noticed that ratios displayed here are male/female as contrasted to the convention of displaying female/male ratios.  Thus the small ratio numbers in the right columns reflect a female disadvantage just as the small ratio numbers in whole population display a female disadvantage.

Dre'ze(a) & Sen (p 161) found that the female disadvantage was most pronounced in the states of Bihar, Haryanna, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. In addition, they show the ratio of female death rate to male death rate in the age group 0 to 4 years for all states. In the Dre'ze and Sen table (a3), Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh stand out with the highest female disadvantage while Andra Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu display the least disadvange.

If we look for the extreme effects of fatal daughter syndrome, we may consider the girl/boy (0 to 7 years) ratios. "Tunumanji village in Barmer, Rajasthan recorder245 girls per 1000 boys. East Kameng in Arunacheal Pradesh, at the other extreme, has 1036 girls for 1000 boys. All 15 districts with more than 1000 girls for 1000 boys are located either in the tribal north-east or in tribal Madhya Pradesh and Orissa." (Raju) For more information on the girl child discrimination causes of the excessive deaths of little girls, see the extensive literature.

Low female/male ratios in Pakistan (data table) suggest the presence of fatal daughter syndrome. In spite of the reluctance of the Pakistani government to collect information which might display girl child neglect in Pakistan, it has been reported in the British Medical Journal that "mortality among children---children aged under 4 is 66 percent higher in girls than in boys." (Wallerstein)

(Directory)  March 20, 2000