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knew the gender of their child, whereas no more than 28 percent of illiterate women had prior knowledge of the sex of their child. The sex ratio at birth increases with the level of education, rising from 103 for illiterate women to 113 for women with a graduate education (UNFPA 2009). The collection of evidence has several implications for approaches to address the unbalanced sex ratios at birth, and China has taken active measures in this direction. General policies to promote economic development might play a role, but Korea’s recent experience
suggests that active measures to influence social norms and facilitate the spread of new values may be very important, in addition to relying on raising female education and labor force participation alone (box 2.2).
Risky behaviors in men Men, as well as women, experience genderspecific health risks. Men tend to bear the burden of higher morbidity and premature mortality related to substance abuse, war and conflict, and violence. The latter tends to be
BOX 2.2 Recent improvement in the sex ratio at birth in the Republic of Korea Since the 1970s, Korea has experienced significant industrialization and urbanization, coupled with increases in women’s education and labor force participation. It is also the first Asian country to register a decline in the proportion of missing girls, from the most male-skewed sex ratios at birth in the mid1990s to ratios within the normal range by 2008. As the sex ratios at birth are usually argued to be a manifestation of son preference, Chung and Das Gupta (2007) used data from fertility surveys to measure trends in son preference directly. They documented a continuous decline from 1985 to 2003 in the fraction of Korean women who reported that they must have a son, from almost 50 percent to less than 20 percent. Women with similar characteristics demonstrated lower son preference over time. Both the process of development and public policies since the 1950s have influenced the factors underlying son preference in Korea. First, the impacts of development were expected to work in many ways, as argued by Chung and Das Gupta (2007): (a) higher earning prospects increased individuals’ independence of family lineage; (b) retirement savings reduced financial dependence on children in old age; (c) urban life setting reduced the focus on traditional filial duty and promoted femaleinclusive social networks; (d) females’ greater economic and physical mobility enhanced the value of daughters; and (e) urban life, with assets associated with nonfarm activities and less pressure from customary laws, facilitated gender equity in inheritance. Through a decomposition exercise, the authors attributed the observed reduction in son preference
in larger part to changing social norms (changes in son preference within all education and urban/rural population groups) and in smaller part to increased urbanization and education (changes due to movements between education and urban/rural population groups). Another methodological approach using simulations of an economic model also implies the impact of development: as the Korean society becomes richer, households that initially selected boys will select girls because of increasing bride price and declining marginal benefits from unmarried sons (Edlund and Lee 2009). Second, though the role of Korean public policies in this process is a mixed story, its experience suggests that interventions to influence social norms and facilitate the spread of new values may be very important, as opposed to reliance on raising female education and labor force participation alone. Active policies to promote rapid economic development in Korea played a role early on in breaking down previous norms of son preference as well as raising female education and labor force participation. And changing social norms contributed relatively more to the decrease in son preference. Reforms to policies that directly constrain women’s status, such as the Family Law established in 1958, which stipulated male family headship and inheritance only through the male line, were slow to follow. With several women’s movements demanding greater gender equity since the establishment of democracy in 1987, this law went through major reforms in 1990, but the system of male household headship was not officially abolished until 2005 (Chung and Das Gupta 2007).