ESTIMATION OF THE NUMBER OF MISSING FEMALES IN 2006 CENSUS AND IT S ROLE IN FERTILITY AND POPULATION GROWTH IN THE FUTURE

Holding a technical and demographic view at the sex ratio, an extensive social issue can be recognized in developing societies. This social issue is nothing but, gender based discrimination against women in these societies. Missing females is a demographic term to illustrate such discrimination. In this cross sectional study, by using Coal method (1991), the number of missing females in census 2006 in Iran has been estimated. We have compared the sex ratio of actual population of Iran in 2006 with the Expected sex ratio, based on separated age groups. The expected sex ratio has been extracted from the 21st level of Regional model life tables and stable populations. Our estimation reveals that approximately 1,076,825 Iranian females were missing in 2006 census. In other words, if Iran had experienced unbiased sex ratios and normal pattern of mortality in all age groups, those females would have been added to the total number of population. Consequently, the actual population of the country would have reached around 71,572,607 people. Moreover, the impact of these missing females on the size and growth of Iran’s population in 2006 was examined, due to loss of their childbearing for all of the future generations. The results show that in general, only less than 18 percent (436,237 females) of these missing females were in their reproductive ages and more than 82 percent of them had passed their reproductive ages and have no potential for child bearing. Furthermore, Even if we assume that childbearing had been distributed equally among fertile females (18 percent), their disappearance from the population, and consequently their fertility reduction had not been a major demographic issue due to their comparative small size and, even for the next generations.