Seminar
Anna Minasyan: The role of conflict in sex discrimination
The role of conflict has been largely overlooked in the 'missing girls' literature. Evidence from an ethnic and territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as a consequence of Nagorno Karabakh War (1991-1994), shows that growing threats to ethnic and national security lead to increased son preference in the society expressed by highly skewed sex ratios at birth once fertility decline and access to sex-determination technology are at play.
Evidence from the South Caucasus
An individual-level population survey from Armenia shows that those with primary concerns over national security and territorial integrity are more likely to have a son bias. Moreover, findings from a panel fixed effects data analysis for 76 Armenian communities over 1987-2011 period reveal that communities closer to the capital of Nagorno Karabakh, the conflict zone, experience higher sex ratios at birth after the increase of ceasefire breaches. Our identification strategy relies on the interaction of distance to conflict and pre- and post-war periods, controlled for community-specific time trends and community-specific time-invariant characteristics