When Girls Are Not Missing: A New Framework for Uncovering Variety in Parents' Preferences for Sons and Daughters

Abstract:
Sex preferences during childbearing are more widespread than has been previously reported. Standard approaches for measuring sex preferences find little evidence that parents in much of the world favor sons or daughters when making childbearing decisions. I develop a new technique that measures preferences in favor of sons or daughters in a population while also measuring the importance that parents place on the sex of children relative to the number of children. I show that, even in regions without strong bias in favor of sons or daughters, at least 40 percent of parents consider the sex of children when deciding whether to have additional children. In Africa, pockets of son and daughter preference follow historical ethnic group boundaries, and traditional use of the plow and inheritance rules are closely tied to sex preferences today.