Sex Preferences, Family Planning, and Fertility: An Israeli Subpopulation in Transition

Abstract

This article examines how Asian and African Jews who immigrated to Israel adjusted their sex preferences to a modern Israeli society without preferences. Most immigrants of Asian and African origins arrived in Israel during the late 1940s and 1950s. Findings indicate that earlier Jewish marriage cohorts of North African and Middle Eastern origin had clear preferences for male children. Data were obtained from a 1974-75 fertility survey among a random sample of married urban Jewish women aged 18-54 years. The sample is divided into women who married before and after 1960. Hazard analyses of the initiation of contraceptive use or abortion reveals that women of Asian or African origin who married before 1960 and had a parity of 4 and mostly boys were 4 times more likely to use birth control than women with more girls. Women with balanced sex ratios of boys and girls were 6 times more likely to use birth control as women with more girls than boys. Women with 4 or more children and mostly boys were less likely to have a fifth child than women with 4 children and mostly girls. Asian or African origin women born after 1960 had lower fertility than women born before 1960. Contraceptive use among women with two children was unrelated to son preference. There was evidence of a preference for a balanced sex composition among European or American origin women in earlier or later marriage cohorts. It is concluded that son preference changed as part of the immigrants social adjustment to their new socioeconomic and cultural living conditions.