Abstract
The sex ratio at birth (SRB) is fairly uniform worldwide (Chahnazarian 1991). Countries with fair to good birth registration data report SRBs of around 104–107 male births for every 100 female births. However, countries such as China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India, among others, have unbalanced SRBs, due likely to their preferences for sons (Guttentag and Secord 1983; Birdsall 1985; Hull 1990; Zeng et al. 1993; Park and Cho 1995; Poston et al. 1997; Poston 2002; Poston et al. 2011). In these countries the numbers of male births are greater than female births, around 110 or more male births per 100 female births.
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Notes
- 1.
The HAN and POLICY variables are only used in the models for China. URBAN is not used for the second Chinese analysis due to data limitations. Similarly, for the same reason, high school and college education were combined in China. The Chinese models use ILLITERATE as a reference group, the South Korean models use ELEMENTARY as the reference group, and the U.S. models use JUNIOR as the reference group, due to the differences in women’s educational attainments. The variables of HISPANIC, WHITE, BLACK, and OTHER are used only in the case of the U.S.
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Poston, D.L., Min, H., McKibben, S.L. (2014). Son Preference and Fertility in China, South Korea, and the United States. In: Poston, Jr., D., Yang, W., Farris, D. (eds) The Family and Social Change in Chinese Societies. The Springer Series on Demographic Methods and Population Analysis, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7445-2_14
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