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Journal ArticleDOI

Son Preference, Sex Ratios, and Marriage Patterns

Lena Edlund
- 01 Dec 1999 - 
- Vol. 107, Iss: 6, pp 1275-1304
TLDR
This article showed that unbalanced sex ratios are but one of several possible consequences of a preference for sons over daughters in Asian countries, and discussed possible links between son preference and marriage patterns such as spousal age gaps, hypergamy (women marrying up), caste endogamy, and cousin marriages.
Abstract
Preference for sons over daughters is widespread in many Asian countries, for example, India, China, and South Korea. This paper models endogenous sex choice and shows that unbalanced sex ratios are but one of several possible consequences of a preference for sons. In particular, if parents want children who reproduce, nonrandom mating may cause women to be consistently born into low‐status families and thus relegated to a permanent underclass. The paper also discusses possible links between son preference and marriage patterns such as spousal age gaps, hypergamy (women marrying up), caste endogamy, and cousin marriages.

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Citations
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Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance

TL;DR: This article used exogenous increases in agricultural income caused by post-Mao reforms in China to estimate the effects of total income and sex-specific income on sex-differential survival of children.
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How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation

TL;DR: The authors used variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants, and found that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood of female marriage, and a large negative effect on female labor force participation.
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Health Capital and the Prenatal Environment: The Effect of Ramadan Observance during Pregnancy

TL;DR: The results suggest that relatively mild prenatal exposures can have persistent effects in diurnal fasting and fetal health, and Muslims in Uganda and Iraq are 20 percent more likely to be disabled as adults if early pregnancy overlapped with Ramadan.
Journal ArticleDOI

How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation

TL;DR: The authors used variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants, and found that high sex ratios had a large positive effect on the likelihood of female marriage, and a large negative effect on female labor force participation.
Journal ArticleDOI

Sons, Daughters, and Parental Behaviour

TL;DR: For instance, the authors found that the parents of boys tend to have higher marital stability and marital satisfaction relative to girls, and fathers spend more time with, and are more involved with, sons than daughters.
References
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Book

A Treatise on the Family

TL;DR: The Enlarged Edition as mentioned in this paper provides an overview of the evolution of the family and the state Bibliography Index. But it does not discuss the relationship between fertility and the division of labor in families.
Journal ArticleDOI

A Treatise on the Family.

Book

Commodities and Capabilities

Amartya Sen
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the relationship between well-being and Sex Bias in India and some international comparative comparisons of the two domains, and present a survey of the relationship.
Journal ArticleDOI

Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring.

TL;DR: Theory and data suggest that a male in good condition at the end of the period of parental investment is expected to outreproduce a sister in similar condition, while she is expectedto outre produce him if both are in poor condition, and natural selection should favor parental ability to adjust the sex ratio of offspring produced according to parental able to invest.
Book

Two-Sided Matching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis

TL;DR: The marriage model and the labor market for medical interns, a simple model of one seller and many buyers, and Discrete models with money, and more complex preferences are examined.
Related Papers (5)
Trending Questions (1)
How son preference can destroy the daughter's relationship with family?

The paper does not specifically discuss how son preference can destroy the daughter's relationship with the family. The paper focuses on the consequences of son preference, such as unbalanced sex ratios and potential impacts on marriage patterns.