Women's Status and Fertility in Developing Countries: Son Preference and Economic Security

摘要

The paper examines the relationship between women's status--defined in terms of the degree to which they are economically dependent on men--and fertility in developing countries. The paper adopts a particular theoretical perspective regarding fertility determinants in developing countries and explores the implications of women's status within that context. This perspective gives special attention to the value of children as security assets in settings where public welfare assistance is minimal or non existent and financial and insurance markets are poorly developed. In this context, women's economic status, and the institutional factors that create a particular degree of dependence, determine the relevance of sex of children in defining security goals. In societies where women are highly dependent on men, security goals will, of necessity, be defined in terms of surviving sons; where women are relatively independent economically, it is more likely that children of either sex can serve security goals. Given similar security needs, and other things being equal, fertility will be considerably higher in settings where there is a strong preference for sons than in settings where son preference is weak. A cross-national empirical analysis is presented that lends support to this argument. (Copyright (c) 1984, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.)