<p>Culture has a significant and persistent impact on gender inequality because it serves an important socio-economic function. The introduction of an alternative socioeconomic policy may then affect gender inequality and other related consequences by dismantling the social functions of traditional culture. To test this empirically, we examine the impact of the implementation of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in China on the sex ratio at birth and investment in education across regions with different intensities of the traditional culture of ‘raise sons for old age’ (RSOA). Using the event study method and the CFPS dataset, we find that the NRPS significantly weakened the preference for boys in regions with high traditional cultural intensity, i.e., the proportion of boys decreased by 13.4%. At the same time, the NRPS also reduces parents' investment in their children's education by an average of 1055.9 Yuan, and this is mainly due to the reduction in investment in boys' education, which amounts to 1300.3 Yuan. These evidence confirm that the traditional culture of RSOA is an important reason for the preference for boys and the imbalance in the sex ratio at birth in rural China, as well as one of the reasons for parents' tendency to invest in their children's education at a high level. They also suggest that when the modern social pension system is implemented, it changes the traditional culture by substituting for the traditional pension institutional arrangements, with both intended and unintended consequences.</p>