TY - BOOK ID - 137248012 TI - Missing Women and India's Religious Demography AU - Borooah, Vani AU - Do, Quy-Toan AU - Iyer, Sriya AU - Joshi, Shareen PY - 2009 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Economic status KW - Family Health KW - Fertility KW - Fertility Rate KW - Gender KW - Gender bias KW - Health, Nutrition and Population KW - Important policy KW - Infant mortality KW - Law and Development KW - Levels of infant KW - Mortality KW - Number of children KW - Policy implications KW - Policy Research KW - Population growth KW - Population growth rate KW - Population Policies KW - Progress KW - Religious groups KW - Respect KW - Sex KW - Son preference UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137248012 AB - The authors use recent data from the 2006 National Family Health Survey of India to explore the relationship between religion and demographic behavior. They find that fertility and mortality vary not only between religious groups, but also across caste groups. These groups also differ with respect to socio-economic status. The central finding of this paper is that despite their socio-economic disadvantages, Muslims have higher fertility than their Hindu counterparts and also exhibit lower levels of infant mortality (particularly female infant mortality). This effect is robust to the inclusion of controls for non-religious factors such as socio-economic status and area of residence. This result has important policy implications because it suggests that India's problem of "missing women" may be concentrated in particular groups. The authors conclude that religion and caste play a key role in determining the demographic characteristics of India. ER -