Sex Selection and Health at Birth among Indian Immigrants

Abstract

I use birth-certificate data for Spain to document extremely son-biased sex ratios at birth among Indian immigrants. I also show that the children of Indian immigrants display poor health outcomes during infancy, although there is no evidence of a gender gap in infant health. I provide evidence suggesting that the poor outcomes of Indian children at birth can be attributed to the low health endowments of Indian mothers, while the absence of a gender gap is driven by the fact that the parents who would invest less in girls are less likely to carry the pregnancies of girls to term (more likely to practice sex-selective abortion).