Fertility, Son Preference and Sex-Selection Transition in China: An Analysis of 7 Provinces

Sylvie Dubuc, University of Reading
Cuiling Zhang , China Population and development Research Center

The masculinization of the SRB in China and its geographical variation is well documented. We revisit trends in fertility and SRB in 7 provinces of East China and use a novel measure of sex-selection propensity developed by Dubuc and Sivia (2018) to analyse levels and trends in sex-selection practice. Although trends in SRB gives an overall good proxy of changes in sex-selection, we found some differences in the detail of trends, timing and ranking of regions due to the disproportionality effect of changes in fertility levels on the SRB. We found that sex-selection propensity and prevalence is generally reducing in the recent period but the levels and offset of decline vary widely across the regions and show a geographical diffusion of the sex-selection transition. We further interpret our results in term of intensity and trends in son preference.

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 Presented in Session 121. Sex-Selection at Birth