# **1 Introduction**

There is an extensive literature on parental preferences over a child’s gender.<sup>1</sup> The preference for male children, or son preference, has been widely documented in South and East Asia where gender bias is severe especially before birth and at young ages. Sen (1990) documents abnormally high sex ratios at birth (the share of male births) in large parts of Asia: this evidence is suggestive of sex-selective abortion, infanticide and neglect of female children. Sub-Saharan Africa is typically regarded as a region with low or absent gender preferences.<sup>2</sup> Although it is well recognized that sons are strongly valued in traditional patrilineal societies in Sub-Saharan Africa, no evidence has been found of sex ratios favoring boys at birth (possibly due to lack of accessible technologies for fetal sex determination). Recent studies find that many women are indeed missing in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially during their reproductive years (Anderson and Ray, 2010; World Bank, 2011).<sup>3</sup> This paper revisits the issue of son preference in Sub-Saharan Africa by examining patterns of fertility behavior and family structure in Nigeria. It shows that son preference is prevalent and that its deleterious effects are reflected not in missing young or unborn girl children but rather in the health and well-being of adult women. Increasing sex ratios at birth may be envisaged following a future diffusion of techniques for sex selection as parents seek ways to meet their demand for sons.

The reasons given for son preference are various and include cultural, kinship, economic and institutional factors that typically differ across different societies (Das Gupta et al., 2003; Almond, Edlund, and Milligan, 2009). In the Sub-Saharan African context, anthropological and demographic evidence emphasizes the dominant role of males in patrilineal societies in which descent and inheritance are transmitted through the male line (Goody, 1973, 1976; Isiugo-Abanihe, 1994). Furthermore, male children strengthen the relationship between the wife and her husband’s kin (i.e., by guaranteeing the continuation of his lineage) and secure (the mother’s) access to residence and inheritance upon the husband’s death.

This paper makes two contributions to the existing literature. Anderson and Ray (2010) use

> 1For a cross-cultural review of literature on parental preferences see, among others, Williamson (1976).

> 2Two notable exceptions are Garg and Morduch (1998) who show that children with relatively more sisters than brothers benefit in the intra-household allocation of resources in resource-constrained households in Ghana; and Klasen (1996) who uses population and mortality data for Sub-Saharan Africa to construct an adjusted aggregate reference ratio and finds a small and increasing anti-female bias.

> 3Anderson and Ray (2010) and World Bank (2011) find that the sources of excess female mortality among adult women in Sub-Saharan Africa are primarily HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality. Klasen and Vollmer (2013) use different reference standards than Anderson and Ray (2010) and confirm their findings for excess mortality among young female adults in Africa (though of a smaller magnitude).

2