Son preference, children's gender, and parental commercial pension demand
利用中国县域性别比差异，发现当地性别比每提高一个标准差，头胎为儿子的家庭购买商业养老保险的比例比头胎为女儿的家庭低1.08个百分点，原因在于婚姻市场中男性过剩带来的外部经济支持和激烈竞争。
Abstract This paper examines how sex ratios affect household commercial pension demand in a patrilocal society. Exploiting the cross‐county variations in sex ratios, we estimate the sex‐ratio effects on parental pension decision‐making in the first‐son families relative to the first‐daughter ones. We find that a one‐standard‐deviation increase in the local sex ratio would decrease commercial pension take‐up by 1.08 percentage points, or 51.6 percent, for parents with a firstborn son compared with those with a firstborn daughter. We also observe similar patterns in the premium contribution of commercial pensions. Mechanism analyses suggest that the pension disparity by the first child's gender is attributed to external financial support and intensive competition caused by oversupplied men in the marriage market.