Prenatal sex selection

Previous studies of China’s exceptionally high sex ratio at birth have emphasized the prevailing national and regional fertility policy as well as the gendered composition of children ever born. Little attention, meanwhile, has been paid to the effect of fertility intentions of the sex of next birth for a household. In the paper, we use the data from China’s 2001 national family planning and reproductive health and hierarchical models to study how macro factors (mainly fertility policy) and micro factors (mainly fertility intention and children composition) affect the sex of next birth. We find that fertility policy exerts a significant effect on the sex of next, but this effect is intertwined by children composition. For those having had a son (or sons), the policy exerts no effect, but for those with only daughters, the effect is quite significant. Crucially, however, fertility intention as independent from fertility policy has a significant effect on the sex of next birth.

An abnormal sex ratio at birth (SRB) is an inevitable consequence and common phenomenon among countries with a strong son preference in the process of demographic transition. It reflects that, in certain cultural context, individual interests of females conflicts with household and group interests. Based on the latest data and drawing on a demand perspective, this paper elaborates the foundations of son preference and proposes suggestions to alleviate such proclivity and reduce SRB. It points out that gender inequality at the group level may provide individuals and households with better survival opportunities, better security, better social status and esteem, and better chance of realization of individual life goals, leading to and maintaining the demand for a son. Hence, to effectively reduce SRB it is necessary to first sort out, identify and classify the various demands for son(s) and accordingly find substitutes of son(s) that highlight gender equality to meet individual needs’ for survival, security, self-esteem and self-realization. Then, various forces from the government and society should be joined together to further shake the basis of son preference. Only when these demands are appropriately and effectively supplied by gender sensitive alternatives, can the skewed SRB be brought back to normalcy.

Abortion was legalised in Nepal in 2002 and the government began providing comprehensive abortion care services in 2004. Prior to that, the sex ratio at birth remained within normal limits, though other indicators suggested high levels of son preference. Changes in the sex ratio at birth since 2004 may indicate the extent to which sex selection has resulted from the introduction of abortion services.
Birth-order specific conditional sex ratios (CSRs) were calculated using data from four Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). CSRs were looked at over time as well as for different sub-groups in order to assess trends and see which women were most likely to have sex selective abortions.
During 2007-10 the CSR for second-order births where the first born was a girl was just 742 (girls per 1,000 boys). Before abortion was legalised the same CSR was 1021. The CSR was lowest amongst educated women and richer women, especially in urban areas.
The fall in CSRs witnessed post legalisation indicates that sex-selective abortion is increasing. This change is likely driven by both supply and demand factors. Falling fertility has intensified the need to bear a son sooner, while legal abortion services have reduced the costs and risks associated with obtaining an abortion.

Over the past quarter century the sex ratio at birth (SRB) has risen above natural levels in a number of countries, mostly in Asia. This rise has been made possible by the increasing availability of safe, effective and inexpensive technologies to determine the sex of a fetus and to abort unwanted pregnancies in countries with son preferences. This paper documents levels and trends in the sex ratio at birth, in preferences for male offspring (using information on desired number of girls and boys) and in the implementation of these preferences. DHS surveys from 63 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and for Indian states are the main source of data. A comparison of desired with actual SRBs finds large gaps in most populations, implying a substantial pent-up demand for male offspring and the technology to implement this preference. Two types of preference implementation are considered: the use of contraception to stop childbearing after the desired number of sons has been born and the use of sex selective abortion to avoid female births. The second part of the paper discusses a range of factors that could raise of lower the SRB and their implications for future trends.

China has one of the most skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) in the world. However, while the SRB in Hong Kong (HK) has historically been much lower (~106), it has recently seen a dramatic increase.

We use a very large, detailed data-set (N 850,331) of all recorded births in HK between 1995 and 2009 to calculate new SRBs for the territory both by parity and, by virtue of the large sample size, by a much more detailed set of immigrant partnership variables.

At parity one, the SRBs of both HK born couples and other immigrants are broadly similar. At parity two, the SRB of HK born parents is 107.8. Among recent arrived immigrants from Mainland China, this rises to 127.1. At parities three and four, the HK born SRBs rise to 110.6 and 116.6, while the recently arrived Mainland Chinese SRB is 216.0 and 264.3.

HK has been serving as an outlet for 'elite Mainland couples' able to afford the costs of giving birth there to circumvent the both anti-prenatal sex selection legislation and family planning regulations to achieve the desired effect: a male offspring.

China’s sex ratio at birth has decreased slowly since 2009. Investigation of household-level influences on the desired number and gender of the family’s children can help produce more effective governance policies. A framework for analysis of families’ sex selection and fertility behavior is proposed. Data from the 1‰ sample of the sixth census of China completed in 2011 are used to investigate factors influencing the reproductive behavior of Chinese families with ordinary logistic regression and multiple hierarchical logistic regression. It is found that the probability of having a son is correlated with the mother’s personal characteristics, family structural variables, and marriage pattern. The parity of a son’s birth is positively correlated with the number of daughters previously born and negatively correlated with the number of previously born sons. Increasing China's urbanization and industrialization is likely to have more influence on families’ reproductive decision-making than simply increasing the GDP per capita.

In Republic of Korea, patriarchal family system has brought about imbalanced sex ratio at birth and it kept prevailed even in the mid-1990. However, sex ratio at birth steadily declined since the mid-1990 unlikely other Asian countries. Since imbalanced sex ratio at birth is caused by son preference, this study will examine the factors that might have influenced to the decline of son preference, with particular emphasis on the status of women in society and in household.
Data collected from the Korea National Fertility and Family Health Surveys of 1994, 2003 and 2009 was used. The survey involved women who were aged 15-49 and ever-married. Dependent variable is women’s opinion on “must have a son”. Independent variables are the socioeconomic status of women such as education and occupation level, women’s position in the household when it comes to decision-making and autonomy in the household.
Logistic regression analysis indicates that the influence of married women’s status in the society and household on son preference is varied in different years. In past, women who have lower status in society tend to have higher son preference. However, as the society kept developing, women’s son preference is much more affected by women’s status in household than societal factors.

In this paper we use the concepts of Behavioral Intention (a person’s relative degree of intention to perform a given behavior) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) (behavioral intention can be predicted by the individual’s attitude and subjective norms of other people’s attitude) to develop a model of fetal sex selection in rural China. Using the TRA model and primary data collected from surveys conducted in three counties of SX Province, we analyzed the impact of subjective norms on an individual’s behavioral intention to select the sex of their fetus. Results suggest that, whether or not to select the sex of one’s fetus during pregnancy is determined primarily by the individual’s attitudes toward the relative worth of having a male or female child (son preference). In this model, the subjective norms of groups in an individual’s social ties structure strongly affect the individual’s intention to sex-select. Different types of social ties correlate differently with the intention to sex-select indicating that the choice to sex-select during pregnancy is an outcome of a tension between blood ties and marital ties, strong ties and weak ties.