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KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

최신자료
Using Life Satisfaction Data to Measure Parents‘ Child Gender Preferences
CEPR
2026.03.03
Can questions about life satisfaction be used to measure parental preferences for daughters versus sons? Daughter preference has rarely been documented in the literature, even in matrilineal settings. One possible reason is that the commonly used measures of parental gender preference, such as fertility-stopping rules and sex ratio at birth, are ill-suited to high-fertility settings. We instead assess maternal preferences in Malawi by examining the life satisfaction of women who currently have one child, comparing those with a daughter to those with a son. We find that in matrilineal (but not patrilineal) households, having a daughter increases mothers‘ life satisfaction, relative to having a son.