WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

A SHARP INCREASE IN SEX RATIO AT BIRTH IN THE CAUCASE…
of the other Caucasian republics nor the Muslim Central Asian countries
of the former Soviet Union are affected. It is all the more striking
that this phenomenon has appeared first in these countries of the
Caucasus rather than in the southern Mediterranean Muslim countries.
At the level of national groups, the recent trends in the Caucasian
countries differ from those observed in the neighbouring countries.
Since 1995, while sex ratio has been increasing in Georgia, Armenia,
and Azerbaijan, it has remained stable not only in the Ukraine and
Russia, but also in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
and Kyrgyzstan (Figure 2). The ratio is just as stable in Iran, a country
for which a reliable time series is available (Ladier-Fouladi, 2003). The
current sex ratio at birth is close to 105 in Turkey, Syria, Cyprus and
Israel. The Caucasus appears then as a dense block distinct from all the
other countries in the rest of the region.
Figure 2 Trend in sex ratio at birth in the countries of the Caucasus compared
to some neighbouring countries, 1989-2001
120
115
110
105
100
Sex ratio
1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001
Armenia Azerbaijan Georgia
Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Russia
Tajikistan Turkmenistan Ukraine
Uzbekistan Iran
Source: WHO mortality data base (http://www.who.int/healthinfo/morttables/en/index.
html); Ladier-Fouladi, 2003.
Note: For Iran, data for 1989-1990, 1992-1995 and 1997-1999 are interpolated from 1986,
1991, 1996 and 2000 data.
finally in Latin again, while Georgian and Armenian are two very different languages,
each of them using their specific alphabet.
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