unlike rural areas where lineage exogamy is typically synonymous with village exogamy. Whether urban parents derive support from a child comes to depend less on formal rules based on the gender and birth order of the child, and more on who lives in the same city and the strength of the parent-child relationship. This reduces the gap between the value of daughters and sons to their parents.<sup>19</sup> And female education and employment further enhances the potential value of daughters, especially when they are not completely cut off from their parents as in rural areas.

The conditions of urban life also make it easier for parents to implement greater gender equity in inheritance. Customary rules of inheritance are the most inflexible regarding immovable lineage assets such as land: giving these to a daughter would involve the deeply radical action of passing land out of the lineage. Efforts in China and India to encourage equal inheritance of land met with violent resistance.<sup>20</sup> It is far easier to give daughters a share of savings and assets acquired on one’s own in non-farm occupations. It is also far easier for women to demand their rightful inheritance in urban areas, where legal resources are close at hand — in contrast to rural areas, where such amenities are distant and instead the woman is surrounded by entire male lineages hostile to her intent.

Decades of cumulative social change associated with the above trends seem to have relaxed the pressure to bear sons. As discussed below, the felt need to have sons has declined sharply across all age-groups and socio-economic groups in the population. These changes are illustrated by one woman’s story of her own family, recounted in 1996 before it was apparent that the trend of sex ratios at birth was reversing:<sup>21</sup> “My eldest brother took a concubine and had a son with her because his own wife had not borne a son. My husband's parents disinherited their eldest son because he did not have a son, and gave their property to the second son: he never forgave his wife for not having a son. But my husband's youngest sister was supported by her husband although she had only daughters, even though his parents were terribly angry since they had adopted him in order to carry on their family. A few young couples now are able to bear the pressure of not having a son.” Interestingly, the national survey questionnaires also reflect these changes in social norms. In 1991, women were asked how many brothers their husband had, and his birth order amongst his brothers. But in 2003, they were asked how many brothers _and sisters_ their husband had, and his birth order amongst them. The social science literature on South Korea includes much discussion of the shift in women’s position.<sup>22</sup>

# **3.   Data and Methods**

We analyze the data collected in the Korea National Fertility and Family Health Surveys of 1991 and 2003, which were conducted by the Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare in cooperation with the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. These are nationally representative sample surveys, using the preceding census for their sampling frame. The 1991 survey is the oldest nationally representative fertility survey in South Korea for which the raw data are still available, and the 2003 survey is the most recent one conducted. The sampling method and contents of the survey are described in detail in Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, (1992, 2004).

In both surveys, all women in the sample who were aged 15-49 and ever-married at the time of the survey were interviewed, and a range of data collected on their fertility history, attitudes to family-building, and background characteristics of the woman and her husband. The sample size 6