Disparities in Gender Preference and Fertility: Southeast Asia and Latin America in a Comparative Perspective

Valentine Becquet (), Nicolás Sacco () and Ignacio Pardo ()
Additional contact information
Valentine Becquet: Chargée de Recherche, Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED)
Nicolás Sacco: Pennsylvania State University
Ignacio Pardo: Universidad de la República

Population Research and Policy Review, 2022, vol. 41, issue 3, No 22, 1295-1323

Abstract: Abstract A preference for sons and a sex selection against females are widespread in vast regions of the world, including a great number of Asian and East European countries. However, while a robust son bias has been widely studied in several countries of these regions, much less attention has been given to other regions, such as Latin America. The aim of this paper is to compare gender preferences in twelve selected countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America at the beginning of the twenty-first century by calculating to what extent parents adapt their fertility behaviors to ensure the birth of a preferred sex. Using census data from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International (IPUMS-I), derived mostly from the 2010 round, we compute parity progression ratios with the Kaplan–Meier estimator and estimate Cox regressions to include control variables. The results focus on the probability of having a third child and show that a mixed composition of children (one boy and one girl) is the most widespread preference, except in Vietnam, where a heavy son preference can still be observed. The least preferred outcome varies between regions and countries, but it is most often two daughters.

Keywords: Fertility; Gender preference; Southeast Asia; Latin America (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11113-021-09692-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:poprpr:v:41:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11113-021-09692-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/11113/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11113-021-09692-1

Access Statistics for this article

Population Research and Policy Review is currently edited by D.A. Swanson

More articles in Population Research and Policy Review from Springer, Southern Demographic Association (SDA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().