Breaking down the question
The command word is discuss, and the focus is deliberately narrowed to socio-cultural factors — not the demographic mechanics or the economics of the phenomenon, but the values, kinship arrangements and cultural meanings that make daughters unwanted. A strong answer keeps that focus, treating economic and technological elements only insofar as they are embedded in and driven by cultural preference.
The phrase some states of India is significant. It points to the paradox that the decline in the sex ratio is sharpest not in the poorest regions but in relatively prosperous, agriculturally advanced states such as Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Rajasthan, and in urban rather than rural pockets. This inverts any simple poverty explanation and directs attention to culture — to kinship structures and the marriage economy — as the driver. The examiner expects you to explain why modernisation and prosperity have coincided with a worsening, not an improvement, in the position of the girl child.
You should distinguish the sex ratio (females per thousand males in the whole population) from the more sensitive child sex ratio (in the 0–6 age group), which best isolates the effect of sex-selective practices. For the demographic context of births, deaths and the sex composition of the population, see our notes on the components of population growth.
How to approach it
Open by establishing the puzzle — that the decline is concentrated in prosperous states — so the answer is framed as an explanation, not a lament. Then set out the socio-cultural factors in a logical sequence, from the underlying kinship structure to its concrete expressions.
- The patrilineal and patrilocal kinship structure that makes sons the bearers of lineage, property and old-age security.
- The cultural devaluation of daughters — the ideology of paraya dhan and the ritual necessity of a son.
- The marriage economy — dowry, hypergamy and the daughter as an economic and social burden.
- The intersection of these values with new technology and the small-family norm, which converts preference into selective elimination.
- The paradox of modernisation — why prosperity and education have deepened rather than dissolved son preference.
Close with the wider consequences and a balanced conclusion.
Model answer
The declining sex ratio, and especially the falling child sex ratio in the 0–6 age group, is one of the gravest expressions of gender inequality in India. Amartya Sen's arithmetic of the missing women dramatised its scale — millions of females absent from the population who, on the evidence of more equal societies, should have been alive. That the deficit is sharpest in prosperous, agriculturally advanced states such as Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat rather than in the poorest regions shows that the causes are socio-cultural rather than simply material.
The deepest of these causes lies in the structure of kinship. Across much of northern and western India, descent is patrilineal, residence is patrilocal, and property passes through the male line. A son continues the lineage, inherits and manages the ancestral holding, supports parents in old age and performs the funerary rites believed necessary for their salvation. A daughter, by contrast, marries out and belongs thereafter to her husband's family. Leela Dube's studies of kinship show how this structural logic is transmitted through everyday practice — the metaphors, rituals and food customs that teach children from infancy that a girl is a temporary member of her natal home. Within this system a preference for sons is not irrational prejudice but a coherent response to the way the family is organised.
This structural preference is expressed in a pervasive cultural devaluation of daughters. The idiom of paraya dhan — the daughter as another's wealth, reared only to be given away — captures the sense that investment in her is investment lost. Religious and ritual life reinforces the point: many rites of passage privilege sons, and the birth of a boy is celebrated where the birth of a girl may be received with resignation. Tulsi Patel's work on reproduction and fertility documents how these meanings operate within the household, shaping the decisions of women as well as men.
The marriage economy translates this devaluation into acute economic pressure. The custom of dowry, and the practice of hypergamy in which a daughter must marry into a family of equal or higher status, make the marriage of a daughter a heavy and rising financial burden, while the marriage of a son brings resources in. As dowry has spread across castes and inflated in scale, the daughter is increasingly perceived as a liability to be minimised. The girl child thus becomes the point at which the logic of lineage and the logic of the marriage market converge to devastating effect.
What turns long-standing preference into active elimination is the intersection of these old values with two modern developments. The first is the diffusion of the small-family norm: as families aspire to two or three children, the pressure to ensure that at least one — and preferably the eldest — is a son intensifies, since there are fewer births in which to obtain the desired son. The second is the availability of sex-determination technology. Ultrasound and prenatal diagnostics, spread by the very prosperity and medical infrastructure of the advanced states, allowed son preference to be acted upon before birth through sex-selective abortion, and earlier through female infanticide and the neglect of girl children. Here lies the paradox the question invites: modernisation did not weaken the cultural preference for sons; it supplied efficient new means of satisfying it, which is why the sharpest decline appears among the educated and the well-off.
The consequences reach beyond the individual family. A skewed sex ratio produces a marriage squeeze, with men unable to find brides, and is associated with trafficking, the purchase of brides across regions, and heightened violence against women. Demographically and morally it signals a society consuming its own future. The state has responded with the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act banning sex determination and with campaigns such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, but law and slogans address symptoms while the underlying kinship structure and marriage economy persist. Enforcement is weak, and value change is slow.
In conclusion, the declining sex ratio in some states of India is best explained not by poverty or ignorance but by a patrilineal, patrilocal kinship order that makes sons indispensable and daughters dispensable, expressed through the ideology of paraya dhan and enforced through the dowry-driven marriage economy. Modern technology and the small-family norm have given these old preferences a lethal new efficiency. A durable remedy therefore requires more than prohibition — it demands changes in inheritance, in the security of the aged, in the costs of marriage and in the very valuation of the girl child, so that daughters cease to be experienced as a burden and become, like sons, a source of continuity and worth.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner is testing whether the candidate can honour the phrase socio-cultural and resist sliding into a purely economic or demographic account. The best scripts foreground the puzzle — that the decline is worst in prosperous states — and use it to argue that culture, specifically kinship and the marriage economy, is the driver. Anchoring the answer in Sen's missing women, Dube on kinship and Patel on reproduction demonstrates command of the sociological literature rather than mere current-affairs knowledge.
A common weakness is to list causes flatly, or to treat technology as an independent cause rather than as the instrument through which a prior cultural preference is realised. Candidates who show the intersection of old values with the small-family norm and new technology, and who explain the modernisation paradox, display genuine analytical depth. Distinguishing the child sex ratio from the overall sex ratio, and closing with a structural rather than merely legal prescription, gives the answer the precision and altitude a thirty-mark question rewards.