IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/poprpr/v34y2015i5p665-686.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Female Migration, Cultural Context, and Son Preference in Rural China

Author

Listed:
  • Yao Lu
  • Ran Tao

Abstract

How does female out-migration reconfigure gender values surrounding son preference in origin communities? We propose that the feminization of migration has the potential to infuse origin communities with economic and ideational changes that may challenge son preference. Rural China provides an interesting setting, both because its unprecedented labor out-migration has increasingly included women and because of its persistent son preference. Using data from rural China and instrumental variable regressions to adjust for potential endogeneity bias, this study shows that out-migration of women, but not of men, attenuates son preference among those in origin communities. The role of female out-migration transcends families with direct ties to migration and extends to the entire village. However, cultural context and family positions within that context condition the role of female migration: specifically, the preferences of individuals in families and villages embedded in strong patrilineal cultural practices are less likely to be shaped by female out-migration. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Yao Lu & Ran Tao, 2015. "Female Migration, Cultural Context, and Son Preference in Rural China," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 34(5), pages 665-686, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:34:y:2015:i:5:p:665-686
    DOI: 10.1007/s11113-015-9357-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11113-015-9357-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11113-015-9357-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Du, Yang & Park, Albert & Wang, Sangui, 2005. "Migration and rural poverty in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 688-709, December.
    2. Ashok K. Mishra & Barry K. Goodwin, 1997. "Farm Income Variability and the Supply of Off-Farm Labor," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 79(3), pages 880-887.
    3. Zai Liang & Zhongdong Ma, 2004. "China's Floating Population: New Evidence from the 2000 Census," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 30(3), pages 467-488, September.
    4. Halliday, Timothy, 2006. "Migration, Risk, and Liquidity Constraints in El Salvador," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 893-925, July.
    5. Rachel Murphy & Ran Tao & Xi Lu, 2011. "Son Preference in Rural China: Patrilineal Families and Socioeconomic Change," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 37(4), pages 665-690, December.
    6. Sara Curran & Estela Rivero-Fuentes, 2003. "Engendering migrant networks: The case of Mexican migration," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(2), pages 289-307, May.
    7. David Roodman, 2009. "Mixed-process models with cmp," DC09 Stata Conference 11, Stata Users Group.
    8. Sophia Rabe-Hesketh & Anders Skrondal, 2012. "Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, 3rd Edition," Stata Press books, StataCorp LP, edition 3, number mimus2, March.
    9. David Roodman, 2009. "Estimating Fully Observed Recursive Mixed-Process Models with cmp," Working Papers 168, Center for Global Development.
    10. Avraham Ebenstein & Steven Leung, 2010. "Son Preference and Access to Social Insurance: Evidence from China's Rural Pension Program," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 36(1), pages 47-70, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jianxi Feng & Shuangshuang Tang, 2023. "Living Arrangement Intentions of Adult Migrant Children toward Their Left-Behind Rural Parents in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Haiyang Lu & Peng Nie & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2021. "The Effect of Parental Educational Expectations on Adolescent Subjective Well-Being and the Moderating Role of Perceived Academic Pressure: Longitudinal Evidence for China," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(1), pages 117-137, February.
    3. R. V. Fattakhov & M. M. Nizamutdinov & V. V. Oreshnikov, 2019. "Trends and factors shaping the territorial mobility of the population in the regions of the Russian Federation," Russian Journal of Industrial Economics, MISIS, vol. 12(1).
    4. Futing Chen & Cuntong Wang & Yihe WangDing, 2024. "The Interplay of Sibling Sex Composition, Son Preference, and Child Education in China: Evidence from the One-Child Policy," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 43(5), pages 1-31, October.
    5. Zheng Shen & Derek S. Brown & Xiaodong Zheng & Hualei Yang, 2022. "Women’s Off-Farm Work Participation and Son Preference in Rural China," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(3), pages 899-928, June.
    6. Alice Evans, 2019. "How Cities Erode Gender Inequality: A New Theory and Evidence from Cambodia," CID Working Papers 356, Center for International Development at Harvard University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jason Davis & Noli Brazil, 2016. "Migration, Remittances and Nutrition Outcomes of Left-Behind Children: A National-Level Quantitative Assessment of Guatemala," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, March.
    2. Cornelia Lawson, 2013. "Academic Inventions Outside the University: Investigating Patent Ownership in the UK," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(5), pages 385-398, July.
    3. Fernandez-Cornejo, Jorge & Wechsler, Seth James, 2012. "Fifteen Years Later: Examining the Adoption of Bt Corn Varieties by U.S. Farmers," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124257, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Stancanelli, Elena G. F., 2012. "Spouses' Retirement and Hours Outcomes: Evidence from Twofold Regression Discontinuity with Differences-in-Differences," IZA Discussion Papers 6791, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Hottenrott, Hanna & Lawson, Cornelia, 2014. "Flying the nest: How the home department shapes researchers’ career paths," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio 201409, University of Turin.
    6. Xuan Chen & Jing Chen & Chien-Yu Huang, 2019. "Too Risky to Focus on Agriculture? An Empirical Study of China’s Agricultural Households’ Off-Farm Employment Decisions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, January.
    7. Stancanelli, Elena G. F. & Stratton, Leslie S., 2010. "Her Time, His Time, or the Maid's Time: An Analysis of the Demand for Domestic Work," IZA Discussion Papers 5253, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Barış Alpaslan & Julide Yildirim, 2020. "The Missing Link: Are Individuals with More Social Capital in Better Health? Evidence from India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 811-834, August.
    9. Bodas Freitas , Isabel Maria & Geuna, Aldo & Lawson, Cornelia & Rossi, Federica, 2014. "How Industry Inventors Collaborate with Academic Researchers: The choice between shared and unilateral governance forms," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio 201401, University of Turin.
    10. Mutuc, Maria Erlinda M. & Rejesus, Roderick M. & Pan, Suwen & Yorobe, Jose M., Jr., 2012. "Impact Assessment of Bt Corn Adoption in the Philippines," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 44(1), pages 1-19, February.
    11. Marco Malgarini & Massimo Mancini & Lia Pacelli, 2013. "Temporary hires and innovative investments," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(17), pages 2361-2370, June.
    12. Wang, Chunchao & Zhang, Chenglei & Ni, Jinlan & Zhang, Haifeng & Zhang, Junsen, 2019. "Family migration in China: Do migrant children affect parental settlement intention?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 416-428.
    13. Margherita Comola & Luiz de Mello, 2013. "Salaried employment and earnings in Indonesia: new evidence on the selection bias," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(19), pages 2808-2816, July.
    14. Elena Stancanelli & Arthur van Soest, 2012. "Joint Leisure Before and After Retirement : a double Regression Discontinuity Approach," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00768901, HAL.
    15. Christian Schwens & Marcus Wagner, 2019. "The role of firm-internal corporate environmental standards for organizational performance," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 89(7), pages 823-843, September.
    16. Biswajit Mandal, 2015. "Demand for maternal health inputs in West Bengal-Inference from NFHS 3 in India," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(4), pages 2685-2700.
    17. Hanna Hottenrott & Cornelia Lawson, 2014. "Research grants, sources of ideas and the effects on academic research," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 109-133, March.
    18. Belitski, Maksim & Korosteleva, Julia & Piscitello, Lucia, 2023. "Digital affordances and entrepreneurial dynamics: New evidence from European regions," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    19. Chang, Hongqin & Dong, Xiao-yuan & MacPhail, Fiona, 2011. "Labor Migration and Time Use Patterns of the Left-behind Children and Elderly in Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2199-2210.
    20. Godefroy Nguyen & Sylvain Dejean & François Moreau, 2014. "On the complementarity between online and offline music consumption: the case of free streaming," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(4), pages 315-330, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:poprpr:v:34:y:2015:i:5:p:665-686. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.