Missing Women Estimation

Although slightly more boys are born than girls, females have a biological survival advantage at almost every age, so in populations with equal care the female-to-male ratio rises with age and women come to outnumber men overall. When men outnumber women, especially after accounting for migration and age structure, it signals that girls and women are dying at elevated rates or are not being born — the demographic footprint Sen called missing women.

Sen's original calculation is a stock: it compares the current female population with the number expected under a benchmark, yielding a one-time deficit. Anderson and Ray's flow approach instead estimates how many excess female deaths occur each year, decomposed by age and cause. The flow framing shifts the picture from a fixed historical total toward an ongoing annual toll and shows that much of it is adult disease mortality, not only infant deaths or sex selection.

Not by itself. The estimate is an accounting comparison against a counterfactual benchmark; it shows a female deficit consistent with gender bias. Establishing discrimination as the cause requires additional evidence — for example skewed sex ratios at birth pointing to selection, or excess female mortality concentrated where care is allocated unequally. The number is a powerful indicator, but causal attribution rests on supplementary demographic and epidemiological analysis.