The Demographic Consequences of Sex-Selection Technology

Over the last several years highly accurate methods of sex selection before conception have been developed. Given that strong preferences for sex variety in o¤spring have been documented for the U.S., we move beyond bioethical and moral considerations and ask what the demographic consequences of sex-selection technology could be. Lacking variation across space and time in access to this technology, we estimate a dynamic programming model of fertility decisions with microdata on fertility histories from the National Survey of Family Growth. We leverage the quasi-experimental variation inherent in the random determination of sex at conception to identify the key structural parameter characterizing preferences for sex variety in o¤spring. After recovering these preferences, we simulate the introduction of this technology. While this technology can reduce fertility by allowing parents e¢ ciently reach their preferred sex mix, it could also increase fertility. This is because without this technology, many parents may opt not to have another baby given the uncertainty about its sex. Results suggest that these two e¤ects operate simultaneously, but on net, sex selection technology ends up increasing the average family size among married women by about 2.5 percent in the steady state. We thank Jerome Adda, S. Anukriti, Peter Arcidiacono, Alejandro Badel, Kelly Bishop, Greg Caetano, Jesus Carro, Maria Casanova, David de la Croix, Pascaline Dupas, Joe Hotz, Joe Price, George-Levi Gayle, Limor Golan, Drew Gri¤en, Bart Hamilton, Josh Kinsler, Brian McManus, Bob Miller, Alex Monge-Naranjo, Alvin Murphy, Ronni Pavan, Bob Pollak, Mark Rosenzweig, Bernard Salanie, Seth Sanders, Michele Tertilt, Christopher Walters, Junsen Zhang and participants at the Workshop on Work, Family and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, seminars at the University of Rochester and the Chinese University of Hong Kong and various conferences. All errors remain our own.