Unwanted girls are girls who are alive but likely disfavored by their parents. The 2018 economic survey gives the date to be 21 million. These are the girls who are born but not treated well. They receive less healthcare & schooling with lifelong effects on their well-being.
Missing women are the girls and the women who would be alive today, had the parents not aborted the female fetuses Amartya Sen came up with the problem in 1990 with an article “more than 100 million women are missing”.
The unwanted girls or the “less wanted” are the daughters, the parent gave birth to when they were really hoping for a son.
If one aggregates all the families, one would notice that the sex ratio of the last child (SRLC) is male skewed. It is thus a revealing measure of parents wanting sons.
Non last children are more female, that’s because the child being female led the parents to keep having children in the quest for a son.
The way forward is to improve women’s earning opportunities so that dowries are lower & women have more say in family decision making.
Better options for people to support themselves in old age, such as a good pension system would make having a son less paramount to couples. Societal norms should be reshaped too, so that people start valuing daughter as much as sons.
