The Dual Burdens of Disability and Gender Norms: Understanding disabled women’s fertility in developing countries

How do disabilities affect fertility? Evidence remains scarce in developing countries, where disabilities and son preference are widespread. We construct retrospective panel data on fertility using a hand-collected survey in China. Since son preference is difficult to measure, we embed detailed One-Child Policy rules and existing children’s sex composition into finite mixture models to uncover “patriarchal” and “non-patriarchal” types. We find that wives’ disabilities significantly reduce childbearing, consistent with findings from developed countries. However, in patriarchal families—typically rural with older, educated husbands— wives’ disabilities increase fertility, as childbearing continues until a son is born, seemingly exploiting the wives’ disabilities.