Development Economics Seminar

Du 15/12/2021 de 16:30 à 17:45

Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan

CASSAN Guilhem (University of Namur)

Stopping rule and sex selective abortion: new measures and world evidence

When parents want a specific number of children of a given gender (boys, in general), they can use two methods: the "stopping rule" and sex selective abortion. The stopping rule refers to a behaviour by which parents continue child bearing till they reach their desired number of boys. Sex selective abortion refers to the choice of aborting foetuses of a specific gender. In societies in which gender preferences are prevalent, these methods can heavily affect fertility practices. We propose two novel theory based measures of detection of these practices. Taking the perspective of the child rather than that of the family, these measures are easily implementable, precise, and rely on fewer assumptions than other measures in use. We first show that, under the stopping rule, girls are, on average, exposed to a larger number of younger siblings than boys. We then propose a new method to detect the prevalence of the stopping rule in a given society. This method allows us to identify countries in which the stopping rule prevails, some of which have been largely ignored in the literature. We also identify countries in which the stopping rule targets a desired number of girls rather than boys. Second, we show that sex selective abortion leads to boys have on average more elder daughters than girls. We then propose a new method to detect the prevalence of sex selective abortion in a given society and implement it at the world level.