Page 66 - IJPS-8-2

International Journal of
Population Studies Projecting sex ratio at birth in Pakistan

Figure 6. Post-2020 missing female births simulation in provinces without past imbalanced SRB
Note: Median projections of AMFB (in thousand) are presented. AMFB: Annual number of missing female births. Results are shown for provinces with projections
of annual total births. X-axis: Projection period 2021 – 2050. Y-axis: Simulation scenarios with different start years of SRB inflation from 2021 to 2050.
provinces. Hence, we present the results of scenario-based In general, the later the assumed start year of the
projections of missing female births in provinces without SRB imbalance process, the AMFBs in more years are
current SRB inflation. projected near zero. In Figure 6, the heatmap, these trends
Figure 6 shows the AMFB results in four provinces: manifested as increasing extents of blue areas as the rows
Islamabad (ICT), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh, are traversed from bottom to top. In the heatmap, darker
in which the projected annual total numbers of births are blue means a smaller number of missing female births
available and are not identified with past SRB inflation. while redder means a higher number of missing female
Each row in each heatmap shows the simulated AMFBs births. This implies that while the start year of the SRB
over the projection period 2021 – 2050 under the scenario inflation process delays year by year (i.e., moving up on
that the SRB inflation process starts in a certain year. the y-axis), there are delayed effects on the occurrence of

Volume 8 Issue 2 (2022) 60 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.332