The decline of son preference in South Korea: The roles of development and public policy
The decline of son preference in South Korea: The roles of development and public policy
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00196.x
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发表时间：
2007-12-01
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Das Gupta, Monica
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Chung, Woojin;Das Gupta, Monica
多年来，尽管韩国发展迅速，出生性别比却持续上升。我们证明这并非异常：潜在的男孩偏好随着发育而下降，但由于性别选择技术的改进，男孩偏好对出生性别比的影响直到 20 世纪 90 年代中期才有所上升。现在，韩国的出生性别比下降幅度领先亚洲。我们探讨发展和公共政策如何影响儿子偏好。分解分析表明，发展主要通过引发整个社会的规范变化来减少重男轻女的偏好，而不仅仅是社会经济环境发生变化的个人。尽管公共政策试图维护父权家庭制度，但工业化和城市化却瓦解了前工业化韩国重男轻女的文化基础。我们的研究结果表明，在中国和印度达到韩国的发展水平之前，中国和印度的儿童性别比可能会下降，因为两国政府大力推动规范变革以减少重男轻女。
For years, sex ratios at birth kept rising in South Korea despite rapid development. We show that this was not an anomaly: underlying son preference fell with development, but the effect of son preference on sex ratios at birth rose until the mid-1990s as a result of improved sex-selection technology. Now South Korea leads Asia with a declining sex ratio at birth. We explore how son preference was affected by development and by public policy. Decomposition analysis indicates that development reduced son preference primarily through triggering normative changes across society-rather than just in individuals whose socioeconomic circumstances had changed. The cultural underpinnings of son preference in preindustrial Korea were unraveled by industrialization and urbanization even as public policies sought to uphold the patriarchal family system. Our results suggest that child sex ratios in China and India may decline before those countries reach South Korean levels of development, since the governments of both countries vigorously promote normative change to reduce son preference.