This dissertation consists of two studies of attitudinal gender preferences for children: a cross-national study of 40 less developed countries, and a case study of emerging daughter preference in Japan. While much research has examined gender preferences using behavioral measures such as skewed sex ratios, sex imbalance in infant mortality, and sibling size and order, attitudinal measures have been analyzed less systematically.
In the first study, using Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between 2000 and 2006, I advance understanding of gender preferences for children in developing countries by examining attitudinal measures of gender preference cross-nationally. I examine how gender preferences vary within and across countries and how individual-level and country-level factors explain this variation. My findings show that, while the most popular type of preference in the vast majority of countries is balance preference (preference for an equal number of girls and boys), prevalence of son and daughter preferences vary widely across countries and regions. My multinomial HGLM results show that women's socioeconomic background such as education, household wealth, and rural/urban residence are strong predictors in ways that are expected from theory. At the contextual-level, although there is some evidence that the level of economic development is negatively related to son preference and positively related to daughter preference, most effects were weak, inconsistent, or insignificant aside from the more intuitive regional and cultural influences of South Asia, and to a lesser extent, Islam, that promote son preference.
The second study is a case study of the Japanese to investigate how Japan's unique societal context influences gender preferences for children. Although gender relations are more traditional than other advanced countries, the majority of the Japanese today exhibit daughter preference. Using the Single Persons Study of the 11th Japanese National Fertility Survey conducted in 1997, I examine the extent to which individuals' gender preference are shaped by their gender role attitudes, and evaluate whether daughter preference is a reflection of convergence or persistent divergence in gender roles in Japan. Findings suggest while non-traditional gender attitudes are associated with daughter preference for men, traditional attitudes are associated with daughter preference for women.