Children.

• Position: Bureau News - Panel Discussion

The NBER's Program on Children met in Cambridge on April 2. Program Director Jonathan Gruber, MIT, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Gordon B. Dahl, NBER and University of Rochester. and Enrico Moretti, NBER and University of California, Los Angeles, "The Demand for Sons: Evidence from Divorce, Fertility, and Shotgun Marriage" (NBER Working Paper No. 10281)

Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat and Guy Michaels, MIT, "The Effect of Marital Breakup on the Income and Poverty of Women with Children"

Eric V. Edmonds, NBER and Dartmouth College, "Does Illiquidity Alter Child Labor and Schooling Decisions? Evidence from Household Responses to Anticipated Cash Transfers in South Africa" (NBER Working Paper No. 10265)

H. Naci Mocan, NBER and University of Colorado, and Erdal Tekin, NBER and Georgia State University, "Guns, Drugs, and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Panel of Siblings and Twins"

Philip Oreopolous, NBER and University of Toronto; Marianne E. Page, University of California, Davis; and Ann Huff Stevens, NBER and University of California, Davis, "The Intergenerational Effects of Compulsory Schooling"

Jeffrey R. Kling, NBER and Princeton University; Jens Ludwig, Georgetown University; and Lawrence F. Katz, NBER and Harvard University, "Youth Criminal Behavior in the Moving to Opportunity Experiment"

Dahl and Moretti show how parental preferences for sons versus daughters affect divorce, child custody, marriage, shotgun marriage when the sex of the child is known before birth, and fertility-stopping rules. They document that parents with girls are significantly more likely to be divorced; that divorced fathers are more likely to have custody of their sons; and that women with only girls are substantially more likely to have never been married. Perhaps the most striking evidence comes from the analysis of shotgun marriages. Among those who have an ultrasound test during their pregnancy, mothers carrying a boy are more likely to be married at delivery. When the authors turn to fertility, they find that in families with at least two children, the probability of having another child is higher for all-girl families than all-boy families. This preference for sons seems to be largely driven by fathers, with men reporting that they would rather have a boy by more than a two-to-one margin. In the final part of the paper, the authors compare the effects for the United States to five developing countries.

Having a female firstborn child...