WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SON PREFERENCE AMONG RURAL-URBAN MIGRANTS …
ratio of migrants’ ever-born children and the standard sex ratio (105) is
tested.
Secondly, cumulative and binary logistic regression models are
employed to explore the impacts of social network factors on attitudes
and behaviours related to son preference among these rural-urban
migrants, with migration and individual factors also being considered.
Since the mid 1980s the majority of provinces in rural China have been
subjected to a “one and a half child” policy among Han people. Only a
few provinces carry out a universal “two child” or “one child” policy
(Peng, 1993). It is common to have two children in rural areas, but
having more than two children is strongly prohibited. In addition, sex
ratio at birth increases with parity from the second birth, as a function
of the gender of prior parities (Gao, 1993). We confirm that after
migration, the gender of the second birth (the first birth is before or
after migration) when the first birth is alive reflects strong son
preference. Hence, our analysis of migrants’ son preference behaviour
after migration focuses only on the second birth.
The dependent variable in the cumulative logistic analysis of
migrant’s attitudes about son preference is based on their response to
the question “what will you do when your first child is a girl”.
Responses can indicate no son preference (“stop childbearing”;
value=1), weak son preference (“have a second child and stop
childbearing”; value=0), and strong son preference (“have more
children until have a boy”; value=-1). The dependent variable in the
binary logistic models for analyzing behaviour of son preference is the
gender of the second birth after migration. Here, “without son
preference” and “giving birth to a girl” are regarded as reference
categories respectively.
The independent variables in the analysis both of attitude and
behaviour of son preference include social network, migration and
individual factors.
Social network factors: For the social discussion networks,
individuals’ attitudes and behaviours tend to be influenced by their
network members but also to influence their network members
(Marsden, 1987). In this study, individuals’ childbearing discussion
network is regarded as a social network factor and includes two
variables: the overall effect of network members and weak ties.
In social networks the higher the degree of intimacy between an
individual and another network member, the more the latter should
affect the former’s attitudes and behaviours (Granovetter, 1973;
Fischer, 1982). Therefore, we combine the desired fertility of network
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