Does child gender affect marital status? Evidence from Australia

Pooling microdata from five Australian censuses, I explore the relationship between child gender and divorce. By contrast with the United States, I find no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision to marry or divorce. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage points less likely to be married than parents with a boy and a girl. Surveys of parental attitudes suggest that this effect is more likely to be driven by fathers than by mothers. This finding is not consistent with theories of preference for sons over daughters, differential costs, role models or complementary costs, but is consistent with a theory of parity preference.

本研究整合澳大利亚五次人口普查的微观数据（microdata），探讨子女性别与离婚之间的关联。与美国的相关研究结论形成鲜明对比，本研究未发现头胎子女的性别对婚姻缔结或离婚决策存在显著影响。不过，在拥有两名子女的家庭中，子女均为同性的双亲，其婚姻存续概率较一男一女组合的双亲低1.7个百分点。针对父母态度的调研显示，该效应更可能由父亲而非母亲驱动。这一研究结果并不契合重男轻女偏好、成本差异、榜样效应或互补成本等相关理论，但与生育胎次偏好（parity preference）理论相符。