Son preference and child replacement in Bangladesh: a new look at the child survival hypothesis.
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.
Sufian
A J
AJ
Johnson
N E
NE
D000328:Adult; D001459:Bangladesh; D001721:Birth Intervals; D001942:Breast Feeding; D003643:Death; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010298:Parity; D012737:Sex Factors