Page 68 - IJPS-8-2

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

Balochistan presents a decisively imbalanced SRB. In the Supervision: Muhammad Asif Wazir
other provinces without the existing SRB inflation, we Validation: Fengqing Chao and Hernando Ombao
demonstrate important disparities in the occurrences and Writing – original draft: Fengqing Chao
quantities of female birth deficits before 2050. Writing – review & editing: Fengqing Chao, Muhammad
Asif Wazir, and Hernando Ombao
5. Conclusions
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Our study provides model-based and data-driven SRB
estimates and projections for provinces in Pakistan from The human data used in our study are secondary and
1980 to 2050. Our model results demonstrate important publicly available datasets from surveys and censuses.
disparities in SRB levels and trends across provinces over The survey data are available at https://dhsprogram.com/
time. Balochistan is identified as the only province in for the DHS Program and at https://mics.unicef.org/
Pakistan with an existing SRB imbalance and, consequently surveys for MICS. The census data are available from
missing female births. In future work, in-depth provincial IPUMS International at https://international.ipums.org/
studies and the collection of high-quality birth data are international/.
required to monitor subnational SRB disparities in Pakistan.
Consent for publication
Effective program and policy solutions to curb sex
discrimination remain elusive in Pakistan because the Not applicable.
practices, leading to excess mortality among females and
sex selection, are often poorly understood. Therefore, Availability of data
the institutional response is primarily focused on the Supplementary File 1: Pakistan provincial SRB database.
improvement of the provision of health care. The last two DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21548082
decades have witnessed the adoption of several pro-women
laws such as prevention of sexual violence and harassment, Supplementary File 2: SRB estimates by Pakistan
protection, domestic violence, and early marriages. However, province from 1980 to 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/
the implementation remains challenging, primarily because m9.figshare.21548103
of federal and provincial autonomy to deliver basic social References
services. Advancing gender equality and discriminatory
practices require accountability mechanisms for policy Ali, S.M., Hussain, J., & Chaudhry MA. (2001). Fertility transition
implementation and enforcement of laws, adequate financing in Pakistan: Evidence from census [with Comments]. The
at the provincial level, and community engagement to Pakistan Development Review, 40(4):537-550.
address discriminatory gender and social norms. Alkema, L., Chao, F., You, D., Pedersen, J., & Sawyer, C.C. (2014).
National, regional, and global sex ratios of infant, child,
Acknowledgments and under-5 mortality and identification of countries with
The authors acknowledge the baseline research fund outlying ratios: A systematic assessment. The Lancet Global
Health, 2(9):e521-e530.
support from the King Abdullah University of Science and
Technology. The authors also wishes to acknowledge the https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(14)70280-3
statistical offices that provided the underlying data making Alkema, L., Chou, D., Hogan, D., Zhang, S., Moller, A.B.,
this research possible: Statistics Division, Pakistan. The Gemmill, A., et al. (2016). Global, regional, and national
views expressed in this article are those of the authors and levels and trends in maternal mortality between 1990 and
do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations 2015, with scenario-based projections to 2030: A systematic
Population Fund (UNFPA). analysis by the UN Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-
Agency Group. The Lancet, 387(10017):462-474.
Funding https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00838-7
None. Alkema, L., Wong, M.B., & Seah, P.R. (2012). Monitoring progress
towards Millennium Development Goal 4: A call for
Conflict of interest improved validation of under-five mortality rate estimates.
No conflicts of interest were reported by all authors. Statistics, Politics and Policy, 3(2):1-19.
https://doi.org/10.1515/2151-7509.1043
Author contributions
Atif, K., Ullah, M.Z., Afsheen, A., Naqvi, S.A., Raja, Z.A., &
Conceptualization: Fengqing Chao Niazi, S.A. (2016). Son preference in Pakistan; A myth or
Formal analysis: Fengqing Chao and Hernando Ombao reality. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 32(4):994-998.

Volume 8 Issue 2 (2022) 62 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.v8i2.332