Son or daughter: What is the ideal family in Chi Linh district in Viet Nam?

Viet Nam has exhibited some signs of high sex ratio at birth (SRB) for the first time in 2000 and confirmed high SRB at national level of 110.6 in the 2009 census data. This study is to examine these high SRB and to identify possible social-economic determinants such parental age, birth order, sex of previous birth, parental education and household economic status. We did analyses, including bivariate analysis and logistic regression, on data of 5940 births from 2004 to 2011 that were obtained from CHILILAB, a community-based periodic Demographic-Epidemiologic Surveillance System for Hai Duong. As a result, the SRB in the 2007 – 2011 period was found high, 116.6 boys/100 girls (CI: 109.7 – 123.5). The SRB was at 117 boys/100 girls among the first born children. Among the second children, the SRB was 123 if the previous birth was a girl and 91.4 (CI: 81.8 – 102), which is significantly lower than the normal level, if the previous birth was a boy. Among second born, the chance of being a girl was significantly higher if the first child was a boy. Our findings suggest that in a country with a small family size policy, sex-selective abortion may be used both to have a son and to have a daughter according to the sex of the previous children