Rural and urban sex ratios over the life course across developing countries
Présenté par : Ashira Menashe Oren (Université Catholique de Louvain) ; Discutant : Jacques Véron (Ined)
Sex ratios shape the societies we live in - from marriage opportunities and fertility rates to gender inequality and social disorder. While research has explored variation in sex ratios, with particular attention to sex ratios at birth and amongst under-five year olds, little research addresses the differences in sex ratios between rural and urban populations. The differential timing and levels of natural increase across rural and urban sectors, interacting with urbanization, can create profound gaps in population sex composition within countries. We evaluate the determinants of age-specific sex ratios - sex ratios at birth, mortality differentials by sex and sex-selective migration - by rural/urban sector. We examine how age-specific sex ratios shift by urbanization level across developing regions of the world for 2015 using United Nations data for 123 countries. Considering that rural-urban migration is one of the key drivers of urbanization, we also examine the role of rural-urban migration over the life course in shaping both rural and urban sex ratios. Sex ratio gaps between the rural/urban sectors and their consequence for societies differ drastically by region of the world and stage of urbanisation.
Ashira Menashe Oren
Ashira Menashe-Oren is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Demographic Research of Université Catholique de Louvain where she is researching child migration in sub-Saharan Africa. She completed her PhD in demography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on urban and rural age structure gaps and their effects in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research on rural-urban population dynamics focuses in particular on rural-urban migration, adult mortality differentials and social conflict.