Why do some of the most prosperous regions of India have an adverse sex ratio for women? Give your arguments.

Census 2011 exposed a paradox: prosperous Punjab (child sex ratio 846), Haryana (834), Delhi and Gujarat fared far worse than the national figure of 919 and worse than many poorer states.

Why prosperity coexists with an adverse ratio

• Technology plus purchasing power: prosperity buys easy access to ultrasound and sex-selective abortion, converting latent son preference into actual practice.
• Property and dowry anxieties: landowning families fear fragmentation of holdings through daughters, while dowry inflation in wealthy belts makes daughters appear economic liabilities.
• Small-family norm meets strong son preference: as richer families limit fertility, the pressure to ensure a son within one or two births intensifies sex selection.
• Patrilocal old-age security: sons remain the insurance and inheritance vehicle; daughters marry out.
• Prosperity without social modernization: in the rich northwest, female work participation and autonomy stay low, and rising incomes have often hardened, not eroded, conservative gender norms.

The counter-evidence

• Kerala and many poorer tribal regions record healthier ratios — showing that culture and women's status, not income, are decisive.

This is Amartya Sen's problem of missing women in its starkest regional form. Strict PCPNDT Act enforcement and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao matter, but the durable answer is enforcing daughters' inheritance rights and expanding women's education and employment so that prosperity is delinked from discrimination.