The Sex of Children and the Probability and Timing of Subsequent Births: Comparative Analysis for European Countries

Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska, University of Warsaw
Magdalena Grabowska , University of Warsaw

We examine whether there exists a preference towards having a child of a particular sex, which is reflected in an increased/decreased probability of having a next child and a faster/slower rate of progression if a woman has children of a particular sex. We do that for a number of European countries using mixture cure models and consistent data coming from Harmonized Histories dataset. We find evidence for the existence of the preference for having a girl, which is reflected in an increased probability of not having a second child if the first child was a girl. We show, however, that such a preference is present only in young cohorts in selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries but not in other European countries and not in older cohorts. We also show that women that have 2 children of the same sex are more likely to give birth to the third child, which is consistent with the existing research. The sex mix of the first two children does not affect, however, the time to the third birth. This is seen irrespective of country and cohort. For young cohorts in CEE we do find, however, a higher probability of not giving birth to another child when the first two children are girls than when they are boys, which confirms the preference for having a girl.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe