Can conflicts and natural disasters account for the surplus of older men in Pakistan?

ABSTRACT

The number of missing women in the population of Pakistan in 2015 amounted to approximately 4.4 million. The age distribution of this male surplus (i.e. in the 40+ population) suggests that the collective exposure of selected birth cohorts to deleterious events (i.e. conflicts and natural disasters) may have precipitated a surge in female vis-a-vis male mortality. To analyse this, this paper first collects gender and age disaggregated (wherever possible) mortality statistics arising from conflicts and natural disasters that have occurred throughout the history of Pakistan (since independence) and evaluates their impact on the sex ratios (male/female) of the population by age. Subsequently, it analyses the historical sex ratio pathway by age to assess how these events may have caused deviations from the pathway. The analysis reveals that conflicts and natural disasters (independently or in the aggregate) have had no impact on the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan and hence cannot explain the surplus of men in the country. Nevertheless, it points to the severity and persistence of the missing women phenomenon in Pakistan, especially among the elderly (60+) population. It also indicates the likely endurance of the phenomenon in future cohorts of elderly population in the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex ratios
• conflicts
• natural disasters
• female deficit
• cohort effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Patterns of male-dominated migration in earlier periods may explain the Malaysia and Bahrain cases.

2 This applies mostly to China and India. The outcome for South Korea is uncertain due to government policies to reverse the problem (Das Gupta & Shuzhuo, 1999).

3 Analysis of the newspaper ‘Dawn’. Dates: 9–31 October 2005, 8 November 2005, 8 December 2005, 8 October 2006, 8 October 2010, 8 October 2015. The earthquake struck on 8 October 2005 so these dates correspond to newspapers from the month of the earthquake, one and two months after the earthquake and one, five and ten years after the earthquake respectively.