Disparities in Gender Preference and Fertility: Southeast Asia and Latin America in a Comparative Perspective.

A preference for sons and a sex selection against females are widespread in vast regions of the world, including a great number of Asian and East European countries. However, while a robust son bias has been widely studied in several countries of these regions, much less attention has been given to other regions, such as Latin America. The aim of this paper is to compare gender preferences in twelve selected countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America at the beginning of the 21st century by calculating to what extent parents adapt their fertility behaviors to ensure the birth of a preferred sex.