In traditional societies, where social security and old-age pensions are non-existent, parents look to their sons to support them in old age. Daughters generally leave their parents to live with their husbands’ families. The result of this “patrilocal” tradition is that daughters do not care for their own parents, but rather their husbands’ parents. China’s former “one child” policy intensified the desire for that one child to be a son.  The “one child” policy became a “two child” policy in 2015, and then a “three child” policy in 2021.  These policy relaxations were implemented to expand the number of workers supporting China’s burgeoning population of retirees, but they carried the secondary benefit of slightly mitigating sex imbalance.   Still, son preference remains strong in China, and the current sex ratio at birth deviates significantly from the natural sex ratio — more than any country except Azerbaijan.

A second reason for son preference lies in the prohibitive cost of marrying a daughter.  In South Asia, where the dowry is common, the cost of a dowry and a wedding can add up to two years of family income. Often, the dowry is not a one-time gift but a stream of gifts paid to the groom’s family over the lifetime of the marriage. In regions where the dowry is practiced, 60% of families take out loans to pay for wedding expenses, often borrowing from unscrupulous loan sharks.20  In this context, the birth of a daughter is an economic catastrophe.