Son Preference and Its Impact on Family Size and Domestic Violence Against Mothers in South Asia

This article explores the relationship between child sex composition and intimate partner violence (IPV) in South Asia, a region where the preference for ‘at least one son’ is deeply rooted. Using household surveys in India and Nepal, this article examines a subset of women with identical sex compositions for previous births but differ only in the sex of the newborn child. The study finds that the sex of the first and second child does not affect the mother’s risk of experiencing IPV. However, not having at least one son by the third birth increases the violence index by 9.6 per cent compared to having a son; this effect is large in less affluent households and those where the husband has no education. The findings are robust to sensitivity analyses accounting for unobservable omitted variables related to sex-selective abortion. Mediation analysis shows that around 40 per cent of this increase in IPV is attributed to the decision to have another child in less affluent households and those where the husband has no education. This paper highlights the stress experienced by sonless families in son-preferential societies and how the decision to have more children contributes to an increased risk of IPV.