Preference for boys does not necessarily lead to a gender disbalance: a realistic example

Intuitively, it seems that cultural preference for boys should lead to a gender disbalance – more boys than girls. This disbalance is indeed what is often observed, and this disbalance is what many models predict. However, in this paper, we show, on a realistic example, that preference for boys does not necessarily lead to a gender disbalance: in our simplified example, boys are clearly preferred, but still there are exactly as many girls as there are boys. 1 Formulation of the Problem Preference for boys – a cultural phenomenon. In many cultures, it is important to have a son. So, if a family has a daughter, the parents continue to produce children until they have the desired son. In such situations, it is reasonable to expect gender disbalance. Intuitively, it seems that this will lead to a gender disbalance, i.e., that we will have more boys than girls. Such a disbalance is indeed observed in many countries where cultures have such a preference, e.g., in Thailand. This disbalance is predicted by several models of this phenomenon; see, e.g., [1]. What we do in this paper. In this paper, we consider a simplified model of preference for sons in which, somewhat surprisingly, this preference does not lead to a gender disbalance. Our main simplifying assumption is based on the fact that in many countries with a strong preference for boys, most people are poor, they cannot afford to have too many children – even one child is not easy to support. For such countries, it is reasonable to make a simplifying assumption that, once the family gets a son, they stop producing children.