The demand for sons

[phk]

One of my professor's working papers. Which I found interesting. Should be noted that this is for the US only.

http://dss.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/demand-for-sons.pdf
http://dss.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/washington-post.pdf
http://dss.ucsd.edu/~gdahl/new-york-times-sons.pdf

Quick points summarized.

- Found that having girls has significant effects on marriage, shotgun marriage when the sex of the child is known before birth, divorce, child custody, and fertility.

- The effect of having a first-born girl on the probability that a child grows up without a father in the household. We find that fathers are significantly less likely to be living with their children if they have daughters versus sons. The effect is quantitatively substantial, accounting for a 3·1% lower probability of a resident father for families with a first-born girl.

-The gender differential in living without a father is substantial in every year since 1960 and remains sizable today.We estimate that in any given year, roughly 52,000 first-born daughters younger than 12 years (and all their siblings) would have had a resident father if they had been boys.

-Women with first-born daughters are more likely to have never been married than those with first-born sons, particularly in more recent censuses.

- Evidence suggests that couples who conceive a child out of wedlock and find out that it will be a boy are more likely to marry before the birth of their baby.

- Parents who have first-born girls are significantly more likely to be divorced. The probability that a first marriage ends in divorce for a family with a first-born daughter is 2·2% higher compared to a family with a first-born son.

-Divorced fathers are much more likely to obtain custody of sons compared to daughters.

-Based on a simple model, if parents are biased towards boys, the probability of having additional children should be higher for all-girl families than for all-boy families.  We find that families with a first-born girl are significantly more likely to have additional children. In families with a first-born daughter, the total number of children rises by 0·3%. This effect is sizable. It implies that first-born daughters caused approximately 5500 more births per year, or 220,000 additional births during our sample period 1960–2000.

Possible Conclusion?

Parents in the U.S. favor boys over girls.

[Verily]

That this was true in 1960 is unsurprising. Looking at data from a time when few women were in the workforce tells us relatively little about the current state of things, however. A good study, or one that aimed to capture current as opposed to past attitudes, would omit all data from before at least 1990. It might find the same conclusions, but they would undoubtedly be far more muted.