Divorce, Abortion and Children's Sex Ratio: The Impact of Divorce Reform in China

Arbeitspapier

This paper explores how the relative circumstances of men and women following marital dissolution affect sex-selection behavior within marriages. China's 2001 divorce reform liberalized divorce in favor of women and secured women's property rights after separation. We use this improvement in women's bargaining power in marriage for a regression discontinuity analysis of the demand for sex-selective abortions. We show that the increase in women's bargaining power reduces the propensity to have a son after a firstborn daughter by 8.9 percentage points. We also find that the effect is larger for women with higher health risks.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 8230

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
• Subject: gender inequality ; intra-household allocation ; divorce law

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Sun, Ang ; Zhao, Yaohui
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/98985
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET