Economic development, female wages and missing female births in Spain, 1900–1930

Key Question Being Explored in This Insight:

Focusing on Spain between 1900 and 1930, a period characterised by signifcant structural transformations and rapid economic growth, Rebeca Echavarri and Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia show that the sex ratio at birth (SRB) was abnormally high, at least until the 1920s.

View the page of: Rebeca Echavarri

Institution: Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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This video video discusses a study focusing on the phenomenon of missing girls in developing regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, attributing this to sex-selective abortions, infanticide, and neglect. The authors explore the historical context of gender preference in societies, using early 20th-century Spain as a case study.

Key findings suggest that the preference for boys over girls is influenced by two main factors: economic opportunities for women and cultural norms. In societies with limited labor opportunities for women, there is a perception of lower value for girls. Furthermore, cultural practices, such as the expectation that girls marry and leave their families, contribute to the notion that investing in girls is a loss.

The study also highlights that the sex ratio at birth in early 20th-century Spain was significantly skewed, indicating not just under-registration of female births but real neglect. The research indicates that economic conditions impact preferences for genders; higher wages may lead to improved survival rates for girls by allowing families to afford their care, while also affecting registration practices for births.

The authors argue that economic growth alone is insufficient for improving the status of girls; it must be accompanied by increased labor opportunities for women. They suggest that lessons learned from this historical analysis could inform contemporary policy-making in regions currently facing similar gender biases and discrimination, aiming to create a more egalitarian view of gender within families and society. This video video concludes with a call for small but impactful policy changes that challenge existing cultural beliefs about gender roles.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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What we wanted to do with this, studies to, to,

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to link what is happening in, in developing countries today,

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especially in south, and Asia, the Calque

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and Saharan Africa, in terms of the, of the amount of,

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of missing girls that are,

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happening in those, in those regions.

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So we know that sex elective abortion infanticide,

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and basically the mortality neglect of, of girls has led

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to millions of, missing girls

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during the last 45, 50, 50 years.

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Um, what we also know now is that this kind

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of phenomenon is not something, particularly,

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true yes, today,

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but it was also happening, in the past,

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in, in other societies.

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So it's not something only pertaining to Asia, for instance.

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Uh, so this also happened in, in historical Europe.

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So we wanted to know more about the underlying mechanisms

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behind this, phenomenon by studying a particular,

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region that is, Spain.

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In the, in the early 20th century,

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The literature tried to explain preference for songs.

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So why societies in general, they prefer

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to have a boy over a girl.

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So this is related to two key dimensions.

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So what the literature tell us is

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that there are two key dimensions.

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So one is the labor opportunities

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and the other is the expression of culture.

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So what about the labor opportunities?

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So in some societies, women lack,

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employment opportunities.

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So yes, what is expected they to do,

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they are not available in the society.

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And so that is a start.

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This perceived perception that the value

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of women, is lower.

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At the same time, perhaps the labor opportunities exist,

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but the type of family

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that Aris in these societies at the nuclear family

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may women undertake the unpaid care work so

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that they cannot go to the, to undertake the,

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the labor market opportunities

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because they have to do other things at home.

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So the same, so the society has start to build that idea

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that women has less value

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because the mission in economic terms, perhaps so,

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and the other for instance, is in some rural environments,

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they are more space for labor opportunities of boys.

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And the same here.

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Then they start to have different views about,

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what they will do if they have a boy or if they have a gout.

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But together with the labor opportunities,

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we have the expression of culture.

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For instance, in some societies, a locality means

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that you have a girl,

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but she will live, spend the rest of their life with,

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the family of her husband, so

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that this will be perceived as a loss

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of investment for the family.

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You know, so, so they, the boy will stay with them,

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the girl will not stay with them,

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and this start to have an idea that they are different.

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Or for instance, the practice that's the inheritance,

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like the sur name will go

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through the male system in this way, the one that is going

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to keep for forever the remember

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of your family will be the boy.

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So that's, so at the end of the day, boys

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and girls are not the same.

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And the society start to build these ideas about,

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okay, they are not the same.

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No. So, so this is

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what we learned from the literature apart poverty make

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that these some preferences that exist in the society

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sice on such as infanticide

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or sex elective abortions.

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Um, but the literature tell us

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that when some preference exist is still be other reasons

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that make them to turn into this high discrimination

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that lead their, missing female birth and girls.

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No. So that's, poverty is one of the key reasons to,

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to have these scenarios appear.

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We, we chose, Spain in the early 20th century

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as a case study, first of all,

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because, we, we knew, this is not the first study

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that shows that, some preference assisted,

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in Spain in the, in the 19th century

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and probably earlier than than that.

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So we wanted to, to continue

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and try to learn more about that.

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Um, but also it, it is striking how similar,

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this region during this period is

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to contemporary developing countries today.

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So we have a relatively poor society

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that is growing rapidly.

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Uh, so we have growing incomes, we have urbanization,

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we have industrialization, going on.

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We also have, fertility, declining and,

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and mortality as well.

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So there are lots of things happening,

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and at the same time, we, we observe

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that a lot more boys are, being born,

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or at least that's what the statistics show,

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that the x-rays at birth is around 109, 110.

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That compared to the standard be benchmark, which is

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around 105, means that a lot of girls are being missed,

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at birth.

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So the, the, the, the question is what is going on,

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and what kind of similarities can we see, to,

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countries today?

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The other thing that we wanted to, to, to to know is that

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of course, we are not the first one to, find out

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that sex ratio at birth in early 20th century Spain were too

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high, but usually it is assumed that this is a, an issue

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of just, female under registration at birth.

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So it's, it's not that they, they,

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they are killing their daughters,

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but it's just that they are not registering them in

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the, in the statistics.

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So we also wanted to, to check whether that kind

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of explanation, was true.

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So what we are trying to do here is first of all try

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to see whether, under registration might be the reason

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behind these high numbers,

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and also whether there are other mechanisms

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that may explain, these, these factors.

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So we, we want to look especially at, at the economic,

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dimension behind discrimination

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In order to study the role play by under registration

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and fatal neglect in explaining the missing female birth

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first in the fair, in, in this period of a study in Spain,

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the key variable that we are going to use was real weight.

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So for this, what we have done is to create,

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data, panel data set that,

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in incorporate information generally at as province level,

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on the, birds beds.

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And at the same time, by the first time we include,

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the weights of low skilled workers.

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That is very important

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because it's a mix between the rural environments

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that we couldn't get this detailed data

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and the urban environments, no.

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So, and they were separated by sex.

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So, but the limitation of this data set is that,

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this was not released all the years for,

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females and male wages.

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So we, we have some gaps.

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So interestingly,

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because just in this, we started

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to think about an identification strategy

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that allow us to exploit this,

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this regional differences.

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At the same time, we know that, weights

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reals are endogenous

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to the health circumstances in the, in the society.

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So what we did is once to focus the study,

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this part of the study around the First World War,

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what happened with the First World War?

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Okay? Spain was not involved directly in the world,

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but the country received a lot of demand shock.

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So that, which is experienced some kind

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of shock, not.

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So they were, they could they consider as quite

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as good as if they were agen, not pure ogen,

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but at least it was a period in which,

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they are less endogenous than in other periods.

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And we wanted to explore the heterogeneity in the effort of,

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weights on the birth

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and in two interesting dimensions.

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First, is once, if we want to understand the role,

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the incon effort, soc, that is what is the incon

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soc, it's very important.

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So wages, what they are going to do is to,

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if wages increase, there will be a decrease in the cost

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of nurturing kids,

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and especially they will decrease the relative cost of,

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of nurturing girls.

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So that, what does it mean if weight is increased,

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we're going to have a a, an in income effort in the sense

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that more girls will survive, they

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families can avoid the neglect of the girls.

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So we have interestingly in Spain, one surgeon

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of characteristic that allow us to exploit something

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that is in some, back in the medieval world,

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the, the country was divided in regions

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where there was an emergence of the nu,

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nuclear family type,

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another regions in which there was an emergence

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of the esteem family type.

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What is the difference between these two?

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Is that under the esteem families, so several generation

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in the same household, so that,

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the elder woman can take care of the kids

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and on the household chores so that the young woman

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can women, be involved in productive activities so

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that the perceived value of women in the society increase.

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So what we can do, if this mechanism cease

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that is the in cease, so

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that some girls are neglected, then increases in,

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in wages will be, will have

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more effort there where naing costs are higher.

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So that in nuclear fa in nuclear provinces, we are going

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to observe that higher wages

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are translated into more female births.

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Okay? This is in one side.

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Then we also wanted to know if there was under registration,

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because the literature told us that this was very important.

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What we did in this case also studied heterogeneous

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effect of, of weights.

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And we have another so partition

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of provinces in Spain in this case,

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because not all the provinces release wages

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for males and females.

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What we could do is to choose this as an issue of

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how important it was in the region of

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how difficult was in the region to report on female status.

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So what are the cost in some way cost of reporting.

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And then in this case, we expect that higher wages

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increase the opportunity cost of registering girls that mean

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let's go to that time going to registering a girl, a female

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boy, the same, but was more relatively in the case of girls,

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in order to register a child, the husband has to,

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not to in not to provide income to the family

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for at least one hour, if not more.

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This could be losing all the day, no.

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So it was a decrease in the family income.

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So the opportunity cost.

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So in those regions where is was most costly to report,

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on girls, information on women information,

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we are going to observe that increases in wits will increase

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the opportunity costs of registering so

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that there will be less girls, in the registration.

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So that mean we are going to observe

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less female birth is was because of registration,

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but we are going to observe this.

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We observe evidence of both efforts.

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There is evidence of income efforts.

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So that's mean that higher wages,

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make some families to avoid the neglect of girls.

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And so more girls survive there, where is was most costly,

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relatively costly, nurturing them.

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And at the same time we find that evidence

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of registration cost, so that there what is was more costly,

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to register to registering girls,

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then higher weight is decreases the probability

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of registering them.

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So we find evidence of both.

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Then we do also an analysis of the overall effort.

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And we find is that is very interesting.

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We find that the

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in effort was greater than the opportunity cost effort.

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And at the same time, because in the overall effort we can

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compare, the effort of female

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and male weights, we noticed that

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increases in the female weights save the girls

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or double of girls than increases in the weights of,

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male, weights.

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So that is, all the analysis point to the fact that,

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there was fatal neglect in Spain in the first, years

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of the 2020 century.

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So more extended that previously was thought.

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First of all, as Rebecca was saying, one

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of the main implications is that,

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the highest sex ratios at birth

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that we observe in early 20th century Spain were not solely,

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caused by under registration,

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but by real, neglect of of,

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of female, girls.

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Um, but also we were able to find that, economic,

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dimensions are really important.

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Uh, so basically poverty is one of the main reasons

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behind, this discrimination.

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Um, so when parents had to make difficult choices,

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it was girls who suffer more.

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Of course, this is, this is,

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framed within a wider context where cultural

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and social aspects, are important.

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But of course they are only visible when, poverty,

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is also, part of the equation.

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So what we see is that when, circumstances get better,

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this has a positive effect on the survival of girls.

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But we also observe that these kind of,

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improvements in the economic, circumstances

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are also qualified by how the economic system,

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works in the sense of offering,

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labor opportunities for women.

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So we also see in, in our, in our study

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that growth itself is not enough if, if it is not ac

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by expanding, job opportunities for for women.

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So it is because it, this is the only way

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that is gonna affect the social

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and cultural dimensions of how girls are perceived within,

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within the society.

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We can learn from the history in order to apply

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or implement policies to countries

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that nowadays are experiencing the same situation.

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So for instance, this cultural, practices that

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make, boys

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and girls be so different for the conception of

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how important they are for the family,

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not speaking about only about labor opportunities,

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but some things such as sur names

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or these kind of features that could be easily

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modified by policies can have a huge effort on

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how we conceptualize con conceptualize boys

16:32.465 --> 16:34.165
and girls within the family

16:34.865 --> 16:39.205
and may help us to, to more egalitarian views

16:39.355 --> 16:42.325
because we worked a lot on the labor market,

16:42.705 --> 16:45.205
but we know these ideas about aspiration gaps

16:45.265 --> 16:47.045
or what I believe I can do.

16:47.385 --> 16:50.085
So if the society belief in general

16:50.195 --> 16:52.445
that a woman can do less things, that the things

16:52.445 --> 16:55.205
that can do a male, it's very difficult

16:55.205 --> 16:56.765
that a woman believe in herself.

16:57.545 --> 17:00.765
So this know, so this kind of ideas

17:00.995 --> 17:04.085
that we have learned in the history, how advanced inequality

17:04.865 --> 17:07.965
may help to produce real efforts is something

17:07.965 --> 17:09.085
that we could implement.

17:09.105 --> 17:11.045
So there are policies, not it,

17:11.385 --> 17:15.685
but are so small that can have fe impact,

17:16.145 --> 17:18.925
on the perspectives of what can, what women

17:19.105 --> 17:23.605
and what men can do and believe in the path of equality.

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