Abstract
We use the 2001 and 2006 Canadian Census to study sex ratios at second birth among South Asian migrants, conditional on both the spacing between the first two children and the gender of the first-born. We find that South Asian women have an abnormally high share of boys after a first-born girl. Their sex ratio at birth is particularly skewed when the time span between the first two births is short. Several mechanisms may explain this finding. Couples with strong son preferences may attempt to conceive a boy fairly soon after a girl is born Sex-selective abortion may also happen more frequently after conceptions that occur fairly close to the birth of a first girl, because couples may limit the number of repeated abortions later in the interval. Even if sex ratios decrease over time within the birth spell, they still remain somewhat higher for live births spaced three years or longer.
Résumé
Nous utilisons les recensements canadiens de 2001 et 2006 pour l’étude des ratios à la deuxième naissance, conditionnelle à l’espacement entre les deux premiers enfants et aux sexe du premier-né. Les femmes sud-asiatiques ont un taux anormalement élevé de naissances masculines après une naissance feminine. Leur rapport de masculinité à la naissance est particulièrement biasé lorsque l’intervalle de temps entre les deux premières naissances est court. Plusieurs mécanismes peuvent expliquer cette conclusion. Les couples ayant une préférence marquée pour le s garçons peuvent tenter d’een concevoir un assez tôt après la naissance d’une fille, et toute avortement sélectif peut arriver plus fréquemment après la conception qui se produisent assez près de la naissance d’une première fille. Mais les couples peuvent limiter le nombre d’avortements répétés plus tard dans l’intervalle. Même si les sex ratios diminuent avec le temps au cours de la période de naissance, ils restent encore un peu plus élevés pour les naissances espacées de trois ans ou plus.
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Notes
The literature does not find evidence of strong son preference in these last two countries (with sizable samples) with the exception of recent minor imbalances in third births for Vietnam (Almond et al. 2013). In the Census years, 2001 and 2006, raw sex ratios for second births did not display any significant imbalance for Vietnam.
Results with alternative limited dependent variable methods instead of OLS are qualitatively similar.
In separate estimates available upon request, the difference goes up to 11 percentage points at 1% significance if the second birth happens within the first 12 months.
For third births, in estimates not shown here, the difference among those having two girls is large for both Sikhs and Hindus, but only significant for Sikhs.
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Acknowledgments
We appreciate the help of the staff at the University of Waterloo RDC center.
Funding
This work was partly supported by NIH under grant number P2C HD047879-15.
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Adsera, A., Ferrer, A.M. Speeding up for a Son: Sex Ratio Imbalances by Birth Interval Among South Asian Migrants to Canada. Can. Stud. Popul. 47, 133–149 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42650-020-00025-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42650-020-00025-9