SMU SOE Seminar (Nov 9, 2018): Historical Violence and China's Missing Women

Since Amartya Sen's coining of the term, “missing women" -  the unusual short-fall of females in the population - has attracted increasing attention from policymakers, academics, and the general public. Here we examine the role of historical violence as a cause of missing women, using China as a case study. We first employ cross-sectional data to show that Chinese counties that experienced sustained local disorder or ethnic tension in the early modern period have higher contemporary juvenile sex ratios. Second, in an experimental setting, we expose subjects randomly to prime stimuli of either weapon or non-weapon pictures and find that subjects from historically violent counties exhibit stronger son preference when exposed to weapon pictures. By contrast, subjects from historically nonviolent counties are unaffected by weapon priming. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the ramifications of violence and call attention to the role of violence and local disorder in aggravating son preference. More generally, our study sheds light on the historical origins of gender inequality.