Newborn Gender and Technology Adoption Among Rural Entrepreneurs in Ethiopian Family Firms

This paper investigates how the gender composition of potential heirs influences technology adoption decisions in family-owned agricultural micro-enterprises. Drawing on primary field data from three waves of panel surveys of 734 rural households in Ethiopia (2013–2019), we exploit the exogenous micro shock of a newborn child’s gender to isolate its causal impact on farmers’ uptake of new technologies. We find that the arrival of a son—rather than a daughter—significantly increases the likelihood of adopting agricultural innovations. Additional analyses suggest that this heterogeneity is driven primarily by a combination of gendered social and succession norms that prioritize men over women in agricultural leadership together with parents’ rational expectations about sons’ future involvement in the family business. Our findings contribute to research on entrepreneurship and development by identifying family structure—specifically, heirs’ gender—as a novel determinant of technology adoption. More broadly, by situating the analysis within the family-firm paradigm, we argue that these dynamics extend beyond low-income settings; in many developing and advanced economies, gender biases in succession norms may systematically shape strategic investment decisions and long-term business sustainability