Why Are Older Women Missing in India? The Age Profile of Bargaining Power and Poverty

Abstract

Almost half of missing women in India are of postreproductive ages. Can intrahousehold gender inequality and asymmetry in poverty explain a portion of these missing women? Using a natural experiment, I link women’s intrahousehold bargaining power to their mortality risk. Using a structural household model, I estimate the age profile of women’s bargaining power and construct women’s relative poverty rates. I find that women’s bargaining power declines with age, with older women’s poverty rates closely matching their mortality rates by age. This suggests that many missing women might be accounted for by measuring poverty at the individual rather than the household level.