The quantity of education and preference for sons: Evidence from Taiwan's compulsory education reform

Abstract This paper attempts to identify the causal effect of parental education on the male ratio at birth. To deal with the endogeneity of parental education, we exploit Taiwan's educational reform in 1968 making education compulsory up to the ninth grade. Based on a uniquely large and detailed administrative data set from Taiwan, our results show that the average education level of mothers is positively related to the male ratio at birth, both in the case of high-parity births and when mothers are at least 30 years old.