Poll: Slight preference for having boy children persists in U.S.

Gallup has asked this question 11 times since 1941, with an average 11-percentage-point gap in preferences for boys over girls — ranging from a 15-point gap in 1947 and 2000 to four points in 1990. The current eight-point preference for a boy, from a June 1-13 poll, is slightly lower than the 12-point gap in Gallup’s last measure, from 2011.

The 77-year-long tendency for American adults to express overall preferences for a boy over a girl is driven by the marked preference among men for a baby boy and the more closely divided preferences among women. Men, over the years of Gallup’s trend, have preferred a boy over a girl by an average of 25 points, while women have averaged a slight three-point preference for a girl.