Strategic fertility behaviour, early childhood human capital investments and gender roles in Albania

Preferences for male children in Albania are shown to have persisted through nearly half a century of communist rule, and twenty five years of economic transition. Substantial contemporary birth masculinisation is concentrated amongst higher order births. Fertility falls strongly when a firstborn child is male. Still, there is only mixed evidence that parents invest more in young boys than girls, or that women's status increases with the birth of a son. Earlier male births reduce women's midlife employment but do not appear to affect say in household resource allocation. Women in their forties who bore sons at younger ages are considerably more accepting of spousal violence.