Prenatal Sex Selection and Missing Girls in Chian
Prenatal Sex Selection and Missing Girls in China: Evidence from the Diffusion of Diagnostic Ultrasound∗ Lingsheng Meng† University of Maryland, College Park November 2009 Job Market Paper
Abstract How much of the increase in the sex ratio (males to females) at birth since the early 1980s in China is due to increased prenatal sex selection? I answer this question by exploiting the differential introduction of diagnostic ultrasound throughout China during the 1980s, which significantly reduced the cost of prenatal sex selection. The improved local access to ultrasound technology is found to have resulted in a substantial increase in the sex ratio at birth. Furthermore, this effect was driven solely by a rise in the sex ratio of higher order births, especially following births of daughters. I estimate that the local access to ultrasound increased the fraction of males by 1.3 percentage points for second births and by 2.4 percentage points for third and higher order births. Using the annual birth rate at the county level as a proxy for local enforcement of the One Child Policy, the effects of ultrasound are found to be stronger for individuals under tighter fertility control. These findings suggest that the current trend in skewed sex ratios in China is significantly influenced by prenatal sex selection. Several robustness checks indicate that these results are not driven by preexisting differential trends.
JEL Classification: I38, J13, J16, O33
I am particularly indebted to my dissertation advisor, Mark Duggan, and other committee members, John Ham, Melissa Kearney and Jeanne Lafortune for their comments and advice. I also wish to thank Avi Ebenstein, Lena Edlund, Raymond Guiteras, Soohyung Lee, Peter Murrell, Xiaobo Zhang and seminar participants at the University of Maryland, and the CES Nanning Conference for helpful comments. I am grateful to Hongbin Li and Yuyu Chen for generous assistance with data sources and useful discussions. All errors are my own. †
Abstract How much of the increase in the sex ratio (males to females) at birth since the early 1980s in China is due to increased prenatal sex selection? I answer this question by exploiting the differential introduction of diagnostic ultrasound throughout China during the 1980s, which significantly reduced the cost of prenatal sex selection. The improved local access to ultrasound technology is found to have resulted in a substantial increase in the sex ratio at birth. Furthermore, this effect was driven solely by a rise in the sex ratio of higher order births, especially following births of daughters. I estimate that the local access to ultrasound increased the fraction of males by 1.3 percentage points for second births and by 2.4 percentage points for third and higher order births. Using the annual birth rate at the county level as a proxy for local enforcement of the One Child Policy, the effects of ultrasound are found to be stronger for individuals under tighter fertility control. These findings suggest that the current trend in skewed sex ratios in China is significantly influenced by prenatal sex selection. Several robustness checks indicate that these results are not driven by preexisting differential trends.
JEL Classification: I38, J13, J16, O33
I am particularly indebted to my dissertation advisor, Mark Duggan, and other committee members, John Ham, Melissa Kearney and Jeanne Lafortune for their comments and advice. I also wish to thank Avi Ebenstein, Lena Edlund, Raymond Guiteras, Soohyung Lee, Peter Murrell, Xiaobo Zhang and seminar participants at the University of Maryland, and the CES Nanning Conference for helpful comments. I am grateful to Hongbin Li and Yuyu Chen for generous assistance with data sources and useful discussions. All errors are my own. †
References: 29 Cutler, D., McClellan, M., 2001 30 Li, H., Zhang, J., 2007 31 Sen, A., 1990