Missing Unmarried Women

Siwan Anderson, Debraj Ray

NBER Working Paper No. 21511
Issued in August 2015
NBER Program(s):   DEV

We provide estimates of excess female mortality among adult unmarried women in developing regions. We find that more than 40% of adult “missing women” can be attributed to not being married. In India and other parts of South Asia, 55% of the missing adult women are due to not having a husband. For sub-Saharan Africa and China, the estimates are smaller: 35% and 13% respectively. We show that 70% of missing unmarried women are of reproductive age and that it is the relatively high mortality rates of these young unmarried women (compared to their married counterparts) that drive this phenomenon.