IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpstxx/v69y2015i1p57-71.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sex preference for children in German villages during the fertility transition

Author

Listed:
  • Glenn Sandström
  • Lotta Vikström

Abstract

In the past, parents' sex preferences for their children have proved difficult to verify. This study used John Knodel's German village genealogies of couples married between 1815 and 1899 to investigate sex preferences for children during the fertility transition. Event history analyses of couples' propensity to progress to a fifth parity was used to test whether the probability of having additional children was influenced by the sex composition of surviving children. It appears that son preference influenced reproductive behaviour: couples having only girls experienced significantly higher transition rates than those having only boys or a mixed sibset. However, couples who married after about 1870 began to exhibit fertility behaviour consistent with the choice to have at least one surviving boy and girl. This result represents a surprisingly early move towards the symmetrical sex preference typical of modern European populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Glenn Sandström & Lotta Vikström, 2015. "Sex preference for children in German villages during the fertility transition," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 69(1), pages 57-71, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpstxx:v:69:y:2015:i:1:p:57-71
    DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2014.994667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00324728.2014.994667
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00324728.2014.994667?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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:rpstxx:v:69:y:2015:i:1:p:57-71. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rpst20 .

    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.