Over a decade ago Amartya Sen calculated that a staggering 100 million females are missing in South and East Asia (Sen 1992), and countless articles before and since then have created an often heated debate about the causes and consequences and even the number of these missing women.

In this project, I plan to examine the relationship between sub-castes who historically practiced female infanticide and current offspring sex-selection in India. Sub-caste membership embodies marriage practices that require daughters to marry men of equal or higher ranked sub-castes and the failure to do so results in the loss of sub-caste status. These marriage rules and status hierarchy historically encouraged offspring sex-selection in favor of sons in India. Today, despite dramatic changes in gender-specific social roles, rapid economic development, and urbanization, offspring sex-selection in favor of sons not only persists but has also increased. In exploring the relationship between sub-caste identity and offspring sex-selection, this paper focuses on two broad factors that potentially affect the transmission of sub-caste norms and practices across generations. The first factor is the socio-economic characteristics of parents, including their education, work participation, occupational choice, standard of living, land ownership, religion, family structure, type of residence, and exposure to media.

The second factor is the degree of ethnic heterogeneity and sub-caste composition in a households' region of residence. The relationship between sub-caste identity and sex-ratios is examined in the context of these two factors using data from the Third National Family and Health Survey, conducted in 2005-2006.