Son preference

Definition

As a qualitative phenomenon

Son preference refers to a phenomenon where women, or families, prefer sons to daughters. This could manifest itself in a number of ways:

1. Undertaking sex-selective abortions: conceive a child, then abort the fetus if it is female.
2. Having children until there is at least one son.

If sufficiently widespread, (1) can lead to a significant imbalance in the sex ratio of the population. (2) is unlikely to lead to a population-wide imbalance in the sex ratio, but it can lead to a reduction in the diversity of family structure: for instance, families with two elder daughters and one youngest son will be more frequent than families with three sons.