Sex composition and son preference in India and major states: Evidence from the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16)

Abstract The impact of prenatal preferences and family size on the sex ratio of children in patriarchal societies like India has been a major concern for demographers and policy makers. Parents continue to bear children until they achieve their desired number of children and the desired sex composition. There is abundant empirical evidence to show a close relationship between sex preference and fertility. This paper provides pragmatic evidence from India that son preference has pronounced effects on the sex composition of children ever born at the family/micro level. We used the National Family Health Survey-4 data consisting of 455,694 ever-married mothers, aged 15–49, for this study. By assuming that the child sex ratio is a binomial distribution for a Bernoulli random variable, we considered three dependent variables for this study are ideal number of songs, actual number of sons and desired for next child. Women who had attained the highest level of education had a 56% lower preference for sons than others. As far as, regional differences are concerned, women in the northern region preferred the boy child more than those in the southern and western regions.