| Chapter 2: | Background on Population Sex Ratio |
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If Oldenburg’s hypothesis that level of violence influences the sex ratio was correct, and if the instrument was appropriately specified, then the statistical correlation between sex ratio and murder rate should disappear in the two-stage model, which it does not. This study indicates that causality may in fact be from masculine population to level of violence, or more likely, that both are jointly influenced by an unobserved societal factor, such as the degree of patriarchal norms.
Cain (1981, 1986) suggested that son preference stems from the need for insurance against risk, which, in the social and cultural context of South Asia, only sons are entitled to provide. He examined the means of support, living arrangements, and quality of life of elderly men and women in 343 households in Bangladesh and in 320 households in India. Poverty, divorce, and widowhood were more likely among women without a mature son, although the effects in India were not as severe as in Bangladesh due to greater availability of alternative living arrangements.
Prenatal Consequences of Son Preference
Differential Stopping Behavior
Sex ratio at birth within families may be affected by differential stopping behavior; that is, families continue to bear children until they reach the desired sex composition of offspring. In the context of son preference, families who initially have more daughters will continue to bear children until the desired number of sons are born, resulting in both a higher family size and skewed sex ratios of children ever born within families.