As seen above, the masculinization of the child population is mainly due to discriminatory practices against girls, such as sex-selective abortions (the main cause of the sex imbalance at birth), and the neglect of girls leading to excess female mortality at young ages. While the cultural determinants of discrimination are well known, the socioeconomic factors are less clear. The processes in place, the way each one influences the decision to carry out a discriminatory act, and the mechanisms whereby they interact to reinforce each other or, on the contrary, cancel each other out, are difficult to grasp.