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Son preference and child replacement in Bangladesh: a new look at the child survival hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

A. J. M. Sufian  and
Nan E. Johnson
A. J. M. Sufian
Affiliation:
College of Architecture and Planning, King Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Nan E. Johnson
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA
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Summary

Birth history data from women in the 1975–76 Bangladesh Fertility Survey were used to search for intentions to replace dead children. The median intervals between successive births of orders (i) and (i + 1) were not shorter when some siblings of orders below (i) had died. Nor was the median duration between the death of a child and the first posthumous birth shorter when the dead child was a boy or when it was survived by fewer than two brothers. The median intervals were generally shorter when the mother lived in an urban rather than a rural area but this difference was attributable only to the shorter duration of breast-feeding by urban women. These results disputed the notions that the timing of births was deliberately quicker to replace a dead child, that attempts at replacement were sex-selective, or that child replacement intentions were stronger in urban than in rural populations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 207 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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