Does Child Gender Affect Marital Status?
Survey
HILDA
Author(s)
Date Issued
2006-05
Pages
30
Keywords
sons
child gender
marriage
daughters
divorce
Abstract
Pooling microdata from five Australian censuses, I explore the relationship between child gender and divorce. By contrast with the United States, I find no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision to marry or divorce. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage points less likely to be married than parents with a boy and a girl. Surveys of parental attitudes suggest that this effect is more likely to be driven by fathers than by mothers. This finding is not consistent with theories of preference for sons over daughters, differential costs, role models or complementary costs, but is consistent with a theory of parity preference.
External resource (Link)
ISBN
ISSN: 1442-8636 ISBN: 0 7315 3596 0
Type
Reports and technical papers
