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The World Bank Economic Review Advance Access published online on October 23, 2009
The World Bank Economic Review, doi:10.1093/wber/lhp009
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Development, Modernization, and Childbearing: The Role of Family Sex Composition

Deon Filmer, Jed Friedman, and Norbert Schady

Correspondence: email address is dfilmer{at}worldbank.org

JEL codes: J16, J13, O15

Does the sex composition of existing children in a family affect fertility behavior? An unusually large data set, covering 64 countries and some 5 million births, is used to show that fertility behavior responds to the presence—or absence—of sons in many regions of the developing world. The response to the absence of sons is particularly large in Central Asia and South Asia. Modernization does not appear to reduce this differential response. For example, in South Asia the fertility response to the absence of sons is larger for women with more education and has been increasing over time. The explanation appears to be that a latent demand for sons is more likely to manifest itself when fertility levels are low. As a result of this differential fertility behavior, girls tend to grow up with significantly more siblings than do boys, with potential implications for their well-being when quantity–quality tradeoffs result in fewer material and emotional resources allocated to children in larger families.

Deon Filmer (corresponding author) is a lead economist in the Development Economics Research Department at the World Bank. Jed Friedman is a senior economist in the Development Economics Research Department at the World Bank; his email address is jfriedman{at}worldbank.org. Norbert Schady is a senior economist in the Development Economics Research Department at the World Bank; his email address is nschady{at}worldbank.org. The authors thank Monica Das Gupta, Peter Lanjouw, Cynthia Lloyd, T. Paul Schultz, and three anonymous referees for valuable comments and suggestions, and Ryan Booth and Nicholas Ingwersen for outstanding research assistance. They are grateful for financial support from the Hewlett Foundation's Trust Fund on Fertility, Reproductive Health, and Socioeconomic Outcomes and the Government of Norway.


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