Cultural Roots of Son Preference: Evidence From Confucianism in China

Xiangpo Chen, Xinyan Hu and Jinhai Xu

Review of Development Economics, 2026, vol. 30, issue 3, 1818-1828

Abstract: This study addresses why the preference for sons persists in China despite rapid economic development and female empowerment. By exploiting county‐level variation in Confucian temple density, we find that Confucian culture has profoundly shaped gender preference in Chinese society. Specifically, one additional Confucian temple per 1000 km2 is linked to a 0.011 rise in the male‐to‐female birth ratio, or about 2359 more boys per million births, based on a mean ratio of 1.154 at birth. Moreover, we explore how Confucian culture has maintained its persistence. The New Culture Movement disrupted the cultural transmission of Confucian values, while the Hundred Days Reform had no measurable effect. These findings underscore the enduring presence of Confucian culture in modern Chinese society. Quantifying Confucian temple density as an indicator empirically confirms the enduring influence of cultural‐geographic factors on gender preference, thus introducing an anthropological paradigm into development economics.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.70091

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:30:y:2026:i:3:p:1818-1828

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1363-6669

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().