Son Preference across Cohorts: A Tale of Four Countries

Konstantin Kazenin , Stockholm University

The study considers cross-cohort dynamics of son preference in countries of MENA and Central Asia, where son preference is manifested in a higher probability of transition to the next child for women with no sons or an insufficient number of sons. Gender preference theories lead us to expect that as fertility decreases from older to younger cohorts, son preference begins to appear for transitions to lower parities. At the same time, however, social changes such as urbanization and educational expansion for women weaken son preference in younger cohorts, irrespective of parity. Using pooled data from World Fertility Surveys and Demographic and Health Surveys, these expectations are assessed for cohorts of women born in the 1920s-1980s in Bangladesh, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. Cox regressions will reveal whether there is a higher probability and higher speed of transition to the next parity when the previous child was a girl. The cohort variable is interacted with the parameter of sex of the youngest living child, so that cohort effects are directly compared for each country and each parity. The study contributes to current research on gender preferences in fertility by analyzing son preference in a long sequence of cohorts and by a systematic comparison of different parities.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 115. Novel Applications of Traditional Tools in Fertility Studies