Maternal education and son preference

One of the most persistent gender issues in many societies is son preference, with sons receiving preferential treatment over daughters. Previous research has shown that the preference for sons is a primary cause of selective abortion, skewed population sex ratios, and discrimination against daughters. This study provides evidence for the beneficial effects of maternal education on reducing the preference for sons. Our identification comes from the comparison between biological sisters in 67 developing countries across the globe. Quantitatively, a one-year increase in maternal education reduces the preferred number of sons over daughters by 0.17 percentage points. Our heterogeneity analysis further shows that the beneficial effects of maternal education are much larger for the rural and poor population. Besides, we find that these favorable effects could be attributed to women's labor market outcomes, access to information, and assortative matching.