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The Structure of Son Bias in Armenia: From Implicit Associations to Explicit Behavior
... [4][5][6][7] Consequently, the potential of social influence and behavioural spillover to amplify the impact of policy interventions in this way has received much attention in various areas of public health, such as scaling up vaccine delivery, 8,9 reducing the prevalence of female genital mutilation, 1 combating gun violence and smoking, 10,11 and challenging norms on sex-selective abortion. 2,12 When socially beneficial interventions are optimally designed and implemented, behavioural spillover can dramatically amplify their effects in a cost-efficient way. The mechanisms that drive spillover, however, will be subtle and will vary according to culture, the group targeted by the intervention and the behaviour of interest. ...
Public health policy often involves implementing cost-efficient, large-scale interventions. When mandating or forbidding a specific behaviour is not permissible, public health professionals may draw on behaviour change interventions to achieve socially beneficial policy objectives. Interventions can have two main effects: (i) a direct effect on people initially targeted by the intervention; and (ii) an indirect effect mediated by social influence and by the observation of other people's behaviour. However, people's attitudes and beliefs can differ markedly throughout the population, with the result that these two effects can interact to produce unexpected, unhelpful and counterintuitive consequences. Public health professionals need to understand this interaction better. This paper illustrates the key principles of this interaction by examining two important areas of public health policy: tobacco smoking and vaccination. The example of antismoking campaigns shows when and how public health professionals can amplify the effects of a behaviour change intervention by taking advantage of the indirect pathway. The example of vaccination campaigns illustrates how underlying incentive structures, particularly anticoordination incentives, can interfere with the indirect effect of an intervention and stall efforts to scale up its implementation. Recommendations are presented on how public health professionals can maximize the total effect of behaviour change interventions in heterogeneous populations based on these concepts and examples.
... Research with Scandinavian samples does however indicate that greater equality in terms of gender roles does not necessarily neutralize gender preferences for children (Andersson et al., 2006). Changes in son preferences over time in Western countries might only be captured in implicit or indirect indications of son preferences, such as greater father involvement or marital stability (Lundberg, 2005), as social desirability bias has been found to confound parents' explicit reports of son preferences (Schief et al., 2019). The greater expression of pride on cards for boys over time might thus reflect an implicit rather than an explicit process. ...
There is a longstanding tradition in the Netherlands to announce the birth of a child by sending out birth announcement cards to friends and family. These cards provide a glimpse of the ‘zeitgeist’ over the years regarding gender through the way in which the birth of a son or a daughter is announced. The current study examined the gender-typed content of birth announcement cards from 1940 until 2019. To this end, 4669 birth announcement cards were coded based on the following categories: gender of baby, use of color, different types of images, and different types of text. Logistic regression analyses revealed that boy cards were more likely than girl cards to include blue as the dominant color, masculine descriptions of the baby, and parental expressions of pride. Girl cards were more likely than boy cards to include pink as the dominant color and images of flowers. Over time there was a decrease in the inclusion of masculine descriptions on boy cards, as well as the likelihood that fathers were mentioned before mothers. However, the expression of pride on boy cards increased over time. Overall, the amount of gender-typed content in birth announcement cards was minimal. Birth announcement cards which included gender-typed content tended to reflect gender stereotypes and different expressions for boys and girls in subtle ways that continue to reinforce gender stereotypes.
We propose a novel son preference measure that relates the preference to a specific child. We find child-specific son preference to be more common among later born children and in families with fewer sons. Using the novel measure and an interaction instrumental variables approach, we estimate a penalty in early mental functions for unwanted girls of 0.7 standard deviations. This penalty appears to be partially driven by discrimination against girls and partially by pampering of boys. Children’s health and parental inputs do not mediate the effect from son preference to mental development. Our findings highlight the relevance of parents’ attitudes for a nurturing home environment and healthy brain development.
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