The goal of this dissertation is to contribute in three ways to the literature on son preference and fertility through a comparative perspective. First, I examine the impact of son preference on fertility in China and South Korea compared with the United States. The impact that a female birth has on the likelihood of a woman having another birth is of the most concern: Women who have one or two daughter(s) as previous child(ren) are expected to be more likely to experience the hazard of having a second or a third birth. Second, my dissertation attempts to examine the effects of women’s status on son preference if women’s education reduces son preference. Third, my dissertation examines son preference and fertility in the U.S. Even though the U.S. has never shown son preference regarding sex ratios at birth, recent research has shown this association to exist among poor Hispanics. My dissertation used data from a national sample, 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. The results showed that women in China and South Korea who had a daughter instead of a son as their first child had a higher hazard of having a second birth as expected. Moreover, the results showed that the hazard ratio of having a third birth for Chinese and South Korean women was almost four and five times more, respectively. As expected, the hazard ratios for the U.S. were not significant and thus did not support the hypothesis. And the more educated women who had a daughter(s) instead of a son(s) as their previous child(ren) were less likely to have a second birth, but not in the third birth. This means women’s education apparently does not reduce son preference in the case of the third birth. Thus, women’s education apparently has limited or no influence on the childbearing decision where son preference is strong. Third, Hispanic women with low socioeconomic status did not have a significant hazard ratio of having a higher order birth. Accordingly, the dissertation does not find any statistical evidence of American son preference at the national level.

Demographic and sociological theories usually do not incorporate biological variable into their explanations. This dissertation addresses this void by examining the influence of age at menarche on age at first birth, the event of a first birth, and the number of children ever born (CEB). I expand on Demographic Transition theory by incorporating biology as one of the effects of modernization that has an effect on reducing fertility. Age at menarche decreases as a society modernizes. I use data from the 1995 Survey of Family Growth, Cycle V for the U.S., and the 1997 China Survey of Population and Reproductive Health. I further stratify the data into five race/ethnic groups: Chinese Han, Chinese minorities, U.S. Non-Hispanic Whites, U.S. Non-Hispanic Blacks, and U.S. Hispanics of Mexican origin. I use four different statistical methods to model my dependent variables: Ordinary Least Squares Regression, Cox Proportional Hazard Analysis, Poisson Regression, and Negative Binominal Regression. My first major finding is that the younger a woman is when reaching menarche, the younger she will be when giving birth to her first child. Second, the younger a woman is when reaching menarche, the longer the duration to a first birth and the less likely she is to experience a first birth. These two results are consistent in all the groups I analyze. Third, the younger a woman when reaching menarche, the fewer children she will produce. The U.S. Mexican-Origin women are an exception in this final outcome. It is well known that as a society modernizes, age at menarche decreases. Analyses in my dissertation indicate that as women’s ages at menarche decrease, their ages at giving birth to the first child also decrease, but their chances of having a first birth also decrease and their waiting time for having the first birth increases. Also, fertility will decline as age at menarche declines.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Project (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Project (Dept. of Economics) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (MSc (Production Animal Studies, Veterinary Science))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print format.

Thesis (M. Med. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-86).

published_or_final_version / Medical Sciences / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

published_or_final_version / Medical Sciences / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

Much of the recent scholarly attention has been devoted to the low fertility situation experienced by a growing number of developed countries. In this context, the theoretical framework explicitly incorporating the issues of gender in explanations of low fertility has been gaining notable popularity. This dissertation is focused primarily on the application of McDonald's theory of gender equity to the fertility context of two post-communist "low" and "very low" fertility countries, namely Poland and Estonia. Additionally, it tests the relative importance of gender equity at the societal level and the level of the family, contrasts the results of using different operationalizations of gender equity in the family, and compares the effects of gender equity on male and female fertility. I estimate two sex-specific models for Poland and two-sex specific models for Estonia, which respectively use three and two independent variables capturing gender equity in different institutions as well as in the family. All the models use intended fertility as the dependent variable operationalized as either the intention to have the second or higher order birth or the number of additional children intended. The main findings of this dissertation support the gendered explanation of low fertility in Poland and Estonia. More specifically, they indicate that gender equity in the family significantly increases fertility intentions of Polish men and women and Estonian women but not men. However, in none of the models there is evidence that gender equity in institutions outside the family matters to fertility. All in all, the findings support the gendered approach to fertility. The results of my dissertation indicate that it is important to pay attention to how we measure gender equity. I observe some variation in the findings depending on how stringent definition of equity is used. Finally, my research suggests that the importance of gender equity for women's fertility might be more universal but it is also not completely irrelevant to the fertility of men. I conclude this dissertation with a discussion of the implications of my findings and the potential for future development of research in this area.

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