I Will Divorce if You Don’t Give Me More Children, Especially Sons: Evidence from a Vietnam

Although divorces place millions of women from poor countries into hardship, we know little about this issue and its causes. This paper shows that the lack of children is a leading cause for divorce. We use twins and gender of firstborns as instruments to estimate the effect of the number of children and the existence of a son on mother’ marital statuses. The 2009 Vietnam Population Census shows the divorce rate is 1.76 percent. We find two effects of the lack of children on the parents’ divorce. First, an additional child reduces the divorce rate by 0.66 percentage point (equivalent to 37% of the population divorce rate). Second, the existence of at least a son reduces the divorce rate by 0.54 percentage point (equivalent to 30% of the population divorce rate). This massive magnitudes suggest areas for intervention to improve women’s welfare and control the population growth. (PRELIMINARY DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE.) JEL Classification: J12, J13, I12.