Religion as an informal institution: A case of true pure land Buddhism and missing women in early modern Japan

Hirokazu Ishise

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 229, issue C

Abstract: In early modern Japan, infanticide was used for birth control and sex selection. However, some historians hypothesized that people who believed in the True Pure Land (TPL) sect of Japanese Buddhism were less likely to commit infanticide. I statistically examine this hypothesis using a quasi-natural experiment of hinoeuma (fire-horse) year with a two-way fixed-effects estimation. Girls born in a hinoeuma year were reckoned to be inauspicious and subjected to sex-selective infanticide. In 1846 and 1906 hinoeuma, TPL-dominant areas experienced a smaller increase in the male-to-female ratio in the cohort than the areas with less TPL dominance. Additional regressions support the hypothesis that the TPL’s prohibition of infanticide led to this smaller effect.

Keywords: Religion; Buddhism; Missing women; Early modern Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J13 J16 N35 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:229:y:2025:i:c:s0167268124004372

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106823

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