testing, whether she has ever had an abortion, and the number of children ever born.<sup>35</sup> _fgi_ indicates whether the first child ever born is a girl, _edui_ is a dummy variable equal to one if the woman completed at least one year of education, zero if she has completed none, _fgi_<sup>_∗edui_tests</sup> whether the effect is heterogeneous between educated and uneducated women, _Xi,s,b,r_ is the set of covariates including: age of the woman and her partner (and age squared), seven five-year age groups, age at first marriage, age at first birth, whether the woman’s partner completed one or more years of education, woman’s religion and caste, a wealth index, and a urban dummy.<sup>36</sup><sup>_,_37</sup> _αs_ , _γb_ , _δr_ are state, birth year, and survey round fixed effects, respectively. All the regressions (except that for the number of children ever born) also include the number of live births. Since most of the younger women in the sample have not completed their fertility, I restrict the sample to women who have been sterilized or who report they do not want more children when estimating the regression for the number of children ever born. Regression 1 is estimated using a probit model for binary outcomes, and a linear model for the other dependent variable.

If women’s fertility behavior is affected by the sex of the first-born and this is due to son preference, _β_ 1 is expected to be positive in the regressions for desired (and realized) fertility, ultrasound testing, and abortion, while _β_ 1 should be negative for the use of sterilization. In terms of heterogeneous effects, predictions are as follows.<sup>38</sup> Women’s desire for having more children after the birth of a first girl should not differ much between educated or not as they both have strong incentives to try to conceive again for a boy. All women are expected to seek sterilization when the desired sex composition of children is reached. The use of sterilization is in fact widespread among all women irrespective of their education (often women in rural areas have access to ‘sterilization camps’). The use of ultrasound testing is instead part of the routine antenatal care for most educated women (especially those with high education: 74 percent of women with more than 10 years of education in NFHS-III performed the test), but is only rarely undergone among the uneducated. Given their high access to prenatal maternal care, educated women are not expected to resort more to ultrasound testing in response to a first-born girl than the uneducated (since most educated do

> 35The number of children ever born includes all live births to each woman, including dead children and children living elsewhere. Compared to the number of surviving children, this is a more pertinent measure of fertility as it is not affected by differential mortality potentially affected by son preference.

> 36The caste and religion variables are from the woman dataset. Caste includes Scheduled Caste, and Scheduled Tribe (other backward classes (OBC) and other castes are the omitted category). Religion includes Hindu, Sikh, Muslims, Christian (Buddhist, Jain, and other religions are the omitted category).

37The wealth index is a principal component index of services and durable goods owned by the household, including electricity, radio, television, refrigerator, bicycle, motorcycle, and car.

> 38Average values of the independent variables for educated and uneducated women are as follows: 21 and 24 percent for the desire to want more children, 38 and 35 percent for female sterilization, 40 and 10 percent for ultrasound testing, 21 and 18 percent for terminated pregnancy, and 2.9 and 4.2 children ever born (the latter calculated on the sample of women who have been sterilized or do not want to have more children), respectively.

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