Does Hepatitis B Infection or Son Preference Explain the Bulk of Gender Imbalance in China? A Review of the Evidence
China has a large deficit of females, and public policies have sought to reduce the son preference that is widely believed to cause this. Recently a study has suggested that up to 75 percent of this deficit is attributable to hepatitis B infection...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/01/8980990/hepatitis-b-infection-or-son-preference-explain-bulk-gender-imbalance-china-review-evidence http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6392 |
| Summary: | China has a large deficit of females,
and public policies have sought to reduce the son preference
that is widely believed to cause this. Recently a study has
suggested that up to 75 percent of this deficit is
attributable to hepatitis B infection, indicating that
immunization programs should form the first plank of policy
interventions. However, a large medical dataset from Taiwan
(China) shows that hepatitis B infection raises women's
probability of having a son by only 0.25 percent. And
demographic data from China show that the only group of
women who have elevated probabilities of bearing a son are
those who have already borne daughters. This pattern makes
it difficult to see how any biological factor can explain a
large part of the imbalance in China's sex ratios at
birth -- unless it can be shown that it somehow selectively
affects those who have borne girls, or causes them to first
bear girls and then boys. The Taiwanese data suggest that
this is not the case with hepatitis B, since its impact is
unaffected by the sex composition of previous births. The
data support the cultural, rather than the biological,
explanation for the "missing women." |
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