Practically all European countries face the problem of low fertility that is far below the replacement level. In that context, it is important to study factors that influence the decision to have a child. It turns out that sex preferences for children may play a decisive role in a couple's fertility decisions. Despite that sex preference for children has been found to be of key importance for fertility in developing societies and societies that share traditional gender roles, there is also evidence of their existence in developed countries.
In their study, Ewa Cukrowska-Torzewska and Magdalena Grabowska (University of Warsaw) examine whether there exists a sex preference for children among women from 11 European countries. They focus on realised fertility and analyse how the sex of children that were already born impacts further fertility, both in terms of the likelihood of having another child and in terms of the timing of the consecutive birth. They apply event history analysis and use data from the Harmonized Histories dataset to compare women from different countries and cohorts taking into account their socioeconomic characteristics.
Their results show that there exists a sex preference for children in some European countries and surprisingly it is a preference for having a daughter. Specifically, they show that having a first child who is female increases the probability of not having a second child, which points to the existence of a daughter preference. But this is seen among younger cohorts of women (born in years 1960 and later) and not among older ones (born earlier than in 1960), and it is observed in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) but not in other European countries.
The preference for having a daughter is particularly strong in the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Hungary. At parity two, they find that both in CEE and other European countries there is a preference for having children of both sexes, rather than for having a child of a particular sex. This is especially evident among the older cohorts of women, for whom having a third child is considered a less unusual event than it is for women born in later years.
Altogether, the study stresses the importance of focusing on the progression rate to the second birth rather than higher-order births when studying sex preferences for children in contemporary Europe. It is worth remembering that persistent sex preferences for children can lead to risks and various long-term consequences as they might induce sex selection practices influencing the sex ratio at birth.