儿子偏好、代际家庭动态与印度女性心理健康

中文摘要

我们利用印度农村扩展家庭的原始调查数据，考察儿子偏好如何影响跨代女性的心理健康。利用第一胎子女性别的外生变异，我们发现，与儿媳（DIL）同住且儿媳第一胎为儿子的婆婆（MIL），其焦虑或抑郁风险低15%。相比之下，第一胎性别对儿媳心理健康平均而言没有影响，但对于面临生育窗口逐渐关闭的年长儿媳，没有儿子的不利影响开始显现。我们还发现，儿媳第一胎为儿子会使婆婆将更多时间分配转向育儿，并在孩子年幼时增加其对儿媳就业的支持，从而提升了较年轻儿媳的劳动力参与率。这些发现揭示了一条代际路径，将儿子偏好与女性心理健康、家庭内部动态以及超越单纯生育的经济结果联系起来。

Abstract

We examine how son preference affects women’s mental health across generations using original survey data from extended households in rural India. Leveraging exogenous variation in the sex of the firstborn child, we find that mothers-in-law (MILs) whose co-resident daughter-in-law (DIL) had a firstborn son face a 15 percent lower risk of anxiety or depression. In contrast, firstborn sex has no average effect on DIL mental health, although adverse effects of not having a son emerge among older DILs who face a closing reproductive window. We also find that a DIL’s firstborn son shifts MIL time allocation toward childcare and increases her support for DIL employment when children are young, boosting younger DILs’ labor force participation. These findings reveal an intergenerational pathway linking son preference to women’s mental health, intrahousehold dynamics, and economic outcomes beyond fertility alone.