Son preference in China

Son preference in China is a gender preference issue underpinned by the belief that boys have more value than girls. In China, the bias towards male over female offspring is demonstrated by gender sex ratio. Whether children are male or female has an economic impact on families, since the financial support that parents receive after their child marries is significantly differentiated by their gender.

This can be one of the reasons that Chinese parents are more willing to have a son. Chinese agrarian society influences sex preference deeply as well. In agrarian societies, cultivating the land and farming are people's primary source of wealth. Agriculture is explained to require high levels of physical strength in a primitive agricultural society in order to produce more. Thus, the long run agriculture society in China can explain this phenomenon. Although the Chinese patriarchal thinking can be traced back thousands of years, with the development of the Chinese economy, this concept potential gradually disintegrates.