Son Preference and the Desire for an Additional Child in Pakistan

With a Total Fertility Rate of 3.6 and a population growth rate of 2.55%, Pakistan’s fertility transition has been relatively slow, hindering progress towards achieving many of the country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets. This paper examines the role that son preference plays in determining the desire for additional children. Among other factors, this desire for another child is largely influenced by women’s ideal number of sons, which in turn, shapes their future fertility-related decisions and behavior. Using data from the 2017-18 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS), we employed logistic regression on 9,674 currently married women to examine whether son preference influences the desire for an additional child. The empirical evidence suggests that women whose ideal number of sons is 2 or 3+ are 1.27 and 2.01 times more likely, respectively, to desire another child compared to women with a lower ideal number of sons. We also examined the role of the number of living children in shaping future fertility behavior and found that even among women with four or more living children, the desire to continue childbearing remained high among those with a larger number of ideal sons. The findings suggest that investments in female education and women’s empowerment (SDGs 4 and 5), along with promoting women’s employment (SDG 8) and strengthening social security systems that support older persons, could help reduce the high demand for sons in the country.