WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

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N. ALAM –J. VAN GINNEKEN –A. BOSCH
of family formation may disadvantage girls because they are at higher
risk of death in the short subsequent birth intervals after their birth
(Muhuri and Menken, 1997). In order to determine the impact of the
family formation pattern on discrimination against girls, parity specific
probabilities of dying need to be taken into account.
The decline in child mortality levels and in sex differentials in
mortality may also have been facilitated by the impact of womenfocused
development programmes, for example, stipends for girls’
primary and secondary education, micro-credit schemes open to
women and leading to income generating activities, awareness raising
campaigns, etc. Education may erode sex differentials in child mortality
by advocating more modern egalitarian values; it may lead to more
income and other resources, and may lead to making better use of this
income and resources.
Based on this review of the literature we are now in a better position
to formulate the objectives of our study. The objectives are to
examine whether discrimination against girls persists or has shifted
over time and to identify the behavioural mechanisms involved in these
changes. This study will focus on male/female differentials in mortality
of infants and children aged 1-4 years and male/female differences in
nutritional status of children aged 1-4 years old. Sex differentials in use
of child health services are also considered as well as changes in patterns
of enrolment in education for girls versus boys.
2. Data and methods
The data for this study came from number of sources; sex ratios in
the Bangladesh population from censuses undertaken during 1951-
2001; infant and child mortality data generated by the Matlab Health
and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) during 1966-2003
(Bangladesh Population Census 2001; ICDDR,B, 2004); and data on
nutritional status and use of child health services from cross-sectional
surveys conducted both in Matlab and Bangladesh. Since many of the
results to be reported here come from Matlab, we will now provide
more details on this source of data. Matlab is the site of operations of
the HDSS of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research,
Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). It is located in a rural and a low-lying deltaic
floodplain intersected by canals and branches of two big rivers of
Bangladesh. It is about 50 kilometres South-East of Dhaka ((see the
map in Figure 1 in the introduction). In Matlab, travel between villages
and the market town is on foot or by country boat during the rainy
season when -except for household courtyards- most of the area goes