Infant and child sex ratios in late Imperial Russia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses infant and child sex ratios in late Imperial Russia relying on district-level information obtained from the 1897 Russian census (489 districts). The article shows that child sex ratios were, on average, relatively low (around 98 boys per hundred girls) due to the biological female advantage: the extremely high infant and child mortality rates took a greater toll on boys and pushed sex ratios down. These figures, however, hide significant geographical variation and the number of boys (relative to girls) was especially high in Southern, Western and Northern Russia. Apart from the direct impact that different mortality environments could have exerted on sex-specific mortality rates and therefore on the sex ratios of the surviving children, this article explores the potential role of economic, ethnic and religious factors and suggest that particular contexts shaped the perceived relative value of girls and resulted in discriminatory practices against girls. In particular, our results show the importance of different ethnic groups in explaining these patterns conditional on economic and religious factors. In addition, the residuals of our models show clear spatial patterns, thus suggesting that unobserved factors were playing an additional role in explaining son preference. Lastly, this article demonstrate a positive link between historical sex ratios and female discriminatory norms in modern societies and therefore points to persisting factors affecting gender imbalances.