Social Norms and the Impact of Early Life Events on Gender Inequality

Abstract

We study the influence of social norms in shaping the impact of early life exposure to China’s Great Famine on gender inequality. We model how social norms interact with adverse shocks to affect male and female survival chances and influence subsequent human capital investments. We test these predictions empirically by using the 2000 China Population Census that has information on birthplace and estimate a differencein-differences model that combines cohort and regional variation in exposure to the famine with regional variation in the culture of son preference. We find that son preference buffers the negative impact of intrauterine famine shocks on cohort male- to-female sex ratios but actually reduces famine’s impact on gender inequality in health and education.