The correct answer should be preference for male child only. The answer given by first key is option 1 but it might change in second answer key. • The "missing" girls and women' phenomenon • The phrase “missing women” was coined by Amartya Sen when he showed that in parts of the developing world, the ratio of women to men in the population is suspiciously low. • The worsening sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males) in countries such as India and China reflected the gross neglect of women. • It was commonly believed that “boy preference” at birth and the mistreatment of young girls were the main reasons. Hence, statement a is the more appropriate answer. • There is unanimous agreement among experts that this phenomenon is one of the most momentous problems faced by the developing world in modern times. • The general sense is that it can be corrected by political action and public policy. • Amartya Sen calculated how skewed sex ratios translate into absolute numbers of missing women. • His computations permit us to derive the number of additional women who would have been alive in, say, China or India if these countries had the same ratio of women to men as in developed countries, where women and men presumably receive similar care. • Sen’s methodology suggests that more than 200 million women are ‘demographically’ missing across the developing world.