Sunday, December 22, 2013

Study: Sex-Selection Abortion Has Been Positive for Women

Because the girls who make it to birth are really, really desired and their parents are more likely to send them to university. From a study on sex-selection abortion in Taiwan:

I find evidence supporting the substitution hypothesis that prenatal gender discrimination
reduces postnatal discrimination for girls later in life. Once abortion is made legal, families with a strong preference for a boy at a higher birth order (or strong distaste for a girl at a higher birth order) choose to abort the higher order female fetus. Hence, the girls born at higher birth orders after the legalization of abortion are born into families with, on average, higher preferences for girls. I find results consistent with this compositional change, with abortion legalization leading to an increase in university attendance of higher birth order girls by about 4.5 percentage point

Here's the kicker:
As families are shown to substitute across prenatal and postnatal discrimination, placing bans against sex-selective abortions do not provide the solution. In hopes of eliminating both prenatal and postnatal sex selection, policies that remove the underlying male preference should be implemented instead.
Well that "discrimination" has women a world of good, so why eliminate it?

I mean every child a wanted child, right, and who are we to judge their choices?