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Abstract
With poverty studies having shifted their focus from household poverty to individual poverty, a number
of studies have started to examine intrahousehold resource allocation, especially gender bias within the
household as potential causes of poverty. The literature has highlighted the existence of gender
inequalities in South Asia, attributed to strong preferences for male offspring stemming from cultural and
traditional customs. Only a few studies focused on the regional difference in the extent of gender bias and
its response to income growth. To fill a void in previous studies, this study analyzes regional differences
in gender discrimination, taking into account time-series variations. Furthermore, we test whether
economic factors are responsible for gender bias in child mortality.
There are two main objectives in this study. First, through a comprehensive literature review and
a careful treatment of data compilation, regional features and recent trends in gender bias in children’s
health outcomes are updated. We find strong evidence of severe disparity in child health against girls in
South Asia; in contrast, no such anti-female gender bias exists in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Second, this paper empirically tests the relationship between gender biases in child mortality and
income growth using carefully-compiled new country-level panel data, paying attention to the possibility
that such relationship differs between regions and changes over time. To investigate the relationship, two
types of data sets are used: (1) new cross-country panel data of childhood mortality rates by sex, collected
from various sources of macro statistics, such as DHS stat and WHO statistics; and (2) our own estimates
for age-specific child mortality rates of children, constructed from the retrospective information on birth
and death histories included in micro data of each round of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).
The empirical result suggests that income growth is correlated with the reduction of the antifemale
bias in childhood mortality in most regions of the developing world—including South Asia. This
result is reasonable, since income growth leads to an increase in nutrition intake (food consumption) and
in health related inputs. In sharp contrast, the regression result does not show any significant correlation
between gender biases in child health outcomes and income growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. While
previous studies focused on the severe gender bias in South Asia, this study examined the correlation
between income growth and gender bias and found a new dimension of regional contrast between Sub-
Saharan Africa and other regions.