studies focus on.<sup>7</sup> These two phenomena can sometimes move in opposite directions, as in South Korea during 1985-1995 (Table 2, Figures 2 and 3). This can happen when social norms regarding son preference are weakening, while new technologies become available which make it easier to manipulate the sex ratio at birth. The same applies if better technologies become available for assuring children’s survival after birth, since they can be used more assiduously for boys than for girls. Moreover, since educated women are typically better able to access and implement these new technologies, studies can even appear to suggest that gender outcomes for children are worsened by development, and even by improvements in the position of women.<sup>8</sup> In this paper, we use these two distinctions to inform our analysis of the relationship between development and son preference in South Korea. Our analysis is made possible by the fact that South Korean fertility surveys actually ask women about their underlying son preference. The usual practice in fertility surveys is to ask respondents about their preferred number and sex composition of children. The Korean surveys ask a very different question: they ask respondents whether they feel it is imperative to bear a son. This provides a measure of the underlying intensity of son preference. We analyze not only the individual-level characteristics correlated with this variable, but also the secular trends in this variable.

We begin by describing the cultural underpinnings of son preference in South Korea: how these arose from centuries of social engineering designed to make Korea a strong authoritarian state, and how they have been re-shaped by development and by public policies since the 1950s. This is followed by an analysis of the National Fertility and Family Health Surveys conducted in 1991 and 2003 in South Korea. Throughout our analysis, we use the term “son preference” to refer to the underlying son preference, and not its manifestation.

Briefly, our analysis indicates that development has altered son preference primarily through setting in motion changes at the societal ⎯ rather than the individual ⎯ level. Son preference is as expected inversely related to individual socio-economic status, but our decomposition analysis shows that the overwhelming factor underlying the reduction in son preference is a secular trend of changing social norms cutting across all socio-economic groups. We argue that son preference declined in South Korea primarily as a result of ideational change triggered by changes in underlying social and economic conditions, analogous to the discussion in the demographic literature of the role of ideational change in altering fertility behavior.<sup>9</sup> Interestingly, this has happened despite strenuous efforts by the government until recently, to maintain traditional family and gender relations, through legislation and other policies.

# **2. Factors underlying son preference and forces of change**

## **_The roots of son preference in Korea_**

The patriarchal family system that underlies son preference in Korea was introduced through a process of rigorous social engineering during the early-mid Choson dynasty (1392-1910). It replaced a much more bilateral family system, in which a couple might live with either the woman’s or the man’s family, and male and female offspring could both inherit their parent’s property (Deuchler 1992:80-81).

Deuchler (1992, 2003) gives a detailed description of this transformation of the dominant kinship system in Korea. It was central to a Confucian strategy of building a strong authoritarian state, 2