IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp6847.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

It's a Boy! Women and Non-Monetary Benefits from a Son in India

Author

Listed:
  • Zimmermann, Laura V

    (University of Georgia)

Abstract

Son preference is widespread in a number of developing countries. Anecdotal evidence suggests that women may contribute to the persistence of this phenomenon because they derive substantial long-run non-monetary benefits from giving birth to a son in the form of an improvement in their intra-household position. This paper tests this hypothesis in the Indian context. The results suggest that for the most part there is little evidence of substantial female benefits, and any positive impacts of having a son disappear after six months. This implies that the female-specific self-interest in a son is probably much lower than commonly assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Zimmermann, Laura V, 2012. "It's a Boy! Women and Non-Monetary Benefits from a Son in India," IZA Discussion Papers 6847, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6847
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp6847.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rao, Vijayendra, 1993. "The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 666-677, August.
    2. Jungmin Lee, 2008. "Sibling size and investment in children’s education: an asian instrument," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(4), pages 855-875, October.
    3. Douglas Almond & Lena Edlund & Kevin Milligan, 2009. "O Sister, Where Art Thou? The Role of Son Preference and Sex Choice: Evidence from Immigrants to Canada," NBER Working Papers 15391, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Das Gupta, Monica & Chung, Woojin & Shuzhuo, Li, 2009. "Is there an incipient turnaround in Asia's"missing girls"phenomenon ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4846, The World Bank.
    5. Silvia Helena Barcellos & Leandro S. Carvalho & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2014. "Child Gender and Parental Investments in India: Are Boys and Girls Treated Differently?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 157-189, January.
    6. Siwan Anderson, 2003. "Why Dowry Payments Declined with Modernization in Europe but Are Rising in India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 269-310, April.
    7. Sonia Bhalotra & Tom Cochrane, 2010. "Where have all the young girls gone? Identification of sex selection in India," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 10/254, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    8. Seema Jayachandran & Ilyana Kuziemko, 2011. "Why Do Mothers Breastfeed Girls Less than Boys? Evidence and Implications for Child Health in India," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1485-1538.
    9. Nancy Qian, 2008. "Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 1251-1285.
    10. Trevon D. Logan & Raj Arunachalam, 2014. "Is There Dowry Inflation in South Asia?," Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 81-94, June.
    11. Rose, Elaina, 2000. "Gender Bias, Credit Constraints and Time Allocation in Rural India," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(465), pages 738-758, July.
    12. Rahman, Omar & Foster, Andrew & Menken, Jane, 1992. "Older widow mortality in rural Bangladesh," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 89-96, January.
    13. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Schultz, T Paul, 1982. "Market Opportunities, Genetic Endowments, and Intrafamily Resource Distribution: Child Survival in Rural India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 803-815, September.
    14. Chung, Woojin & Das Gupta, Monica, 2007. "Why is son preference declining in South Korea ? the role of development and public policy, and the implications for China and India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4373, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. It’s a Boy! Women and Non-Monetary Benefits from a Son in India
      by UDADISI in UDADISI on 2012-10-08 17:05:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Heath, Rachel & Tan, Xu, 2018. "Worth fighting for: Daughters improve their mothers' autonomy in South Asia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 255-271.
    2. Hoque Nazmul & Boulier Bryan L., 2020. "Hi-tech Sexism? Evidence from Bangladesh," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(3), pages 1-39, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laura Zimmermann, 2012. "It’s a Boy! Women and Non-Monetary Benefits from a Son in India," Working Papers id:5178, eSocialSciences.
    2. Zimmermann, Laura, 2018. "It’s a boy! Women and decision-making benefits from a son in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 326-335.
    3. Marco Alfano, 2014. "Daughters, Dowries, Deliveries:The Effect of Marital Payments on Fertility Choices in India," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 1413, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    4. Jacob, Arun, 2016. "Gender Bias in Educational Attainment in India : The Role of Dowry Payments," MPRA Paper 76338, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Silvia Helena Barcellos & Leandro S. Carvalho & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2014. "Child Gender and Parental Investments in India: Are Boys and Girls Treated Differently?," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 157-189, January.
    6. Luojia Hu & Analía Schlosser, 2015. "Prenatal Sex Selection and Girls’ Well‐Being: Evidence from India," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(587), pages 1227-1261, September.
    7. Lutfunnahar Begum & Philip J Grossman & Asad Islam, 2022. "Parental gender bias and investment in children’s health and education: evidence from Bangladesh [Child gender and parental investments in India: Are boys and girls treated differently?]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(4), pages 1045-1062.
    8. Bhalotra, Sonia & Chakravarty, Abhishek & Gulesci, Selim, 2020. "The price of gold: Dowry and death in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    9. Heath, Rachel & Tan, Xu, 2018. "Worth fighting for: Daughters improve their mothers' autonomy in South Asia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 255-271.
    10. Alfano, Marco, 2017. "Daughters, dowries, deliveries: The effect of marital payments on fertility choices in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 89-104.
    11. Anukriti, S. & Kwon, Sungoh & Prakash, Nishith, 2022. "Saving for dowry: Evidence from rural India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    12. Ebert, Cara & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2022. "Girls unwanted – The role of parents’ child-specific sex preference for children’s early mental development," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    13. Pulver, Ariel & Ramraj, Chantel & Ray, Joel G. & O'Campo, Patricia & Urquia, Marcelo L., 2016. "A scoping review of female disadvantage in health care use among very young children of immigrant families," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 50-60.
    14. Leeson, Peter T. & Suarez, Paola A., 2017. "Child brides," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 40-61.
    15. Chatterjee, Jagori & Merfeld, Joshua D., 2021. "Protecting girls from droughts with social safety nets," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    16. Daniel Rosenblum, 2013. "The effect of fertility decisions on excess female mortality in India," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(1), pages 147-180, January.
    17. Ahmed Elsayed & Olivier Marie, 2020. "Less School (Costs), More (Female) Education? Lessons from Egypt Reducing Years of Compulsory Schooling," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-037/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Anukriti, S & Kwon, Sungoh & Prakash, Nishith, 2018. "Household Savings and Marriage Payments: Evidence from Dowry in India," IZA Discussion Papers 11464, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Zimmermann, Laura V, 2012. "Remember When It Rained: The Elusiveness of Gender Discrimination in Indian School Enrollment," IZA Discussion Papers 6833, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Bhalotra, Sonia & Brulé, Rachel & Roy, Sanchari, 2020. "Women's inheritance rights reform and the preference for sons in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    son preference; non-monetary benefits; bargaining power; intra-household allocation; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6847. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.