Explanation:

 Issues of son preference & son meta preference:

The biologically determined natural sex ratio is 1.05 males for every female.
• Son Preference- India’s sex ratio (males for every female) during the period between 1970-2014 increased substantially from 1060 to 1108. However, a negative correlation has been observed between income and sex ratio in the country. One of the major reasons behind the high sex ratio in India is sex selective abortion as well as the neglect of the girl child after birth. It reflects an explicit son preference which results in millions of “missing women”.
• Son-Meta Preference- It is measured by the Sex Ratio of the Last Child (SRLC). For India, the sex ratio of the last child for firstborns is 1.82, heavily skewed in favor of boys compared with the ideal sex ratio of 1.05. This ratio drops to 1.55 for the second child for families that have exactly two children and so on.
The striking contrast between the two panels conveys a sense of son meta preference. It gives rise to “unwanted” girls (girls whose parents wanted a boy, but instead had a girl), computed as the gap between the benchmark sex ratio and the actual sex ratio among families that do not stop fertility. It stands at 21 million for India.
• Reasons for such a son preference include patrilocality (women having to move to husbands’ houses after marriage), patrilineality (property passing on to sons rather than daughters), dowry (which leads to extra costs of having girls), old age support from sons and rituals performed by sons.