This volume documents how families, communities and some groups (single men, young scarce women, parents) adapt and adjust to recent demographic shifts in China and India. It discusses how demographic change interacts with other processes of change, including changes with respect to economic development and globalization, gender, class, caste, families, migration and work. The chapters offer micro-level analyses contextualized in larger processes of change and push further existing understandings of the consequences of the demographic imbalance between men and women in China and/or India, particularly from a gender perspective. As such this book will be of interest to scholars and students in population studies, sociology, international development, gender studies, and Asian studies.

SharadaSrinivasan is Associate Professor of International Development and the Canada Research Chair in Gender, Justice and Development in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph, Canada. Her research is located within the broad field of gender and development, focusing on gender-based discrimination and violence including young peoples experiences of them. She has worked on the issue of daughter elimination in India for about 15 years examining various facets of the phenomenon. She recently completed research on the consequences of daughter deficit in India, and on the prevalence of son preference and daughter aversion among Canadian Punjabis. Current areas of research include: The Social Sciences Humanities Research Canada (SSHRC)-funded four year research on young people's pathways into farming in Canada, China, India and Indonesia; and relative contributions of daughters and sons to their elderly parents' well-being in India.
Shuzhuo Li is currently Changjiang Professor of Population and Social Policy Studies, Director of the Institute for Population and Development Studies, Director of the Center for Population and Social Policy Research, Co-director of the Center for Aging and Health Research, the Chief Scientist of the Shaanxi Collaborative Innovation Center for Social Governance and Social Policy Research, School of Public Policy and Administration, Xian Jiaotong University, China. He is also a consulting professor at the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, Stanford University. His research is focused on population and social development as well as public policies in contemporary transitional China, including population policies, aging and old-age support, rural-urban migrants and social integration, gender imbalance and sustainable social development, ecosystem services and human wellbeing. He has published numerous papers and books, and has won many honors and prizes, including the Fudan Management Award in 2011.

Chapter 1. Unifying perspectives: Understanding scarce women and surplus men in China and India (Sharada Srinivasan and Shuzhuo LI).- Chapter 2. Being Bare Branches: Demographic Imbalance, Marriage Exclusion and Masculinity in North India (Paro Mishra).- Chapter 3. Household Division, Intra-Generational Inequality and Marriage Prospects of Single Men in Multi-Son Families in Rural China (Yan LI, W.D. LI, and Shuzhuo LI).- Chapter 4. Who Said I Was a Forced Bachelor? Single Mens Voices and Strategies in Rural China (Kun Zhang and Danièle Belanger).- Chapter 5. Now it is Difficult to Get Married: Contextualising Cross-Regional Marriage and Bachelorhood in a North Indian Village (Shruti Chaudhry).- Chapter 6. The Sex Ratio Question and the Unfolding of a Moral Panic?  Notions of Power, Choice and Self in Mate Selection among Women and Men in Higher Education in China (Lisa Eklund).- Chapter 7. The Impact of Bride Shortage in South India: Vellala Gounders in Western Tamil Nadu (Judith Heyer).- Chapter 8. Sex Ratio Imbalances in Asia: An Ongoing Conversation between Anthropologists and Demographers (Christophe Z. Guilmoto).