The Humane Face of Indian Society in Terms of Sex Ratio as a Linear Function of Income and Literacy Growth

Abstract

In most of the social science literature women biological status is best exposed in terms of sex ratio. In decennial census report of India sex ratio is expressed as the number of alive female members against per thousand alive male. When differentiated as per age groups it becomes a time trend reflector of biological status of women. Sex ratio is comparable across time and space and also used as the humane face of a society. Much evidence is there that income and literacy growth do not match with sex ratio variance. Is it absolutely, universally or partially true in a developing country like India is a matter of concern. The simple statistical tools such as Karl Pearson correlation coefficient and coefficient of determination are sufficient to dig out the primary face of this fact. With this statistical exercise on census data of India with reference to the state of Assam and some case studies in the district of Jorhat, this paper is an attempt to that end and comes to the conclusion that the human face of Indian society is not universally saved in terms of sex ratio as a linear function of income and literacy.