  The original version of Bayesian reconstruction, a method for estimating
age-specific fertility, mortality, migration and population counts of the
recent past with uncertainty, produced estimates for female-only populations.
Here we show how two-sex populations can be similarly reconstructed and
probabilistic estimates of various sex ratio quantities obtained. We
demonstrate the method by reconstructing the populations of India from 1971 to
2001, Thailand from 1960 to 2000, and Laos from 1985 to 2005. We found evidence
that in India, sex ratio at birth exceeded its conventional upper limit of
1.06, and, further, increased over the period of study, with posterior
probability above 0.9. In addition, almost uniquely, we found evidence that
life expectancy at birth was lower for females than for males in India
(posterior probability for 1971--1976 0.79), although there was strong evidence
for a narrowing of the gap through to 2001. In both Thailand and Laos, we found
strong evidence for the more usual result that life expectancy at birth was
greater for females and, in Thailand, that the difference increased over the
period of study.
