Is Son Preference Disappearing from Bangladesh?

M Asadullah, Nazia Mansoor, Teresa Randazzo () and Zaki Wahhaj
Additional contact information
Teresa Randazzo: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

No 2020:24, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: Historically, son preference has been widely prevalent in South Asia, manifested in the form of skewed sex ratios, gender differentials in child mortality, and worse educational investments in daughters versus sons. In the present study, we show, using data from a purposefully designed nationally representative survey for Bangladesh that, among women of childbearing age, son bias in stated fertility preferences has weakened and there is an emerging preference for gender balance. We examine a number of different hypotheses for the decline in son preference, including the increasing availability of female employment in the manufacturing sector, increased female education, and the decline of joint family living. Using survival analysis, we show that, in contrast to stated fertility preferences, actual fertility decisions are still shaped by son preference.

Keywords: Fertility; gender bias; birth spacing; female employment; Bangladesh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 J13 J16 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-dev, nep-evo and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.unive.it/web/fileadmin/user_upload/dip ... zzo_wahhai_24_20.pdf First version, anno (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is son preference disappearing from Bangladesh? (2021)
Working Paper: Is Son Preference Disappearing from Bangladesh? (2020)
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:ven:wpaper:2020:24

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sassano Sonia ().