IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v202y2018icp61-69.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the sex ratio at sexual maturity affect men's later-life mortality risks? Evidence from historical China

Author

Listed:
  • Zang, Emma
  • Zheng, Hui

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the male-to-female sex ratio (measured as the proportion male) at sexual maturity and later-life mortality risks in the context of pre-industrial northeast China, using registration data from the Qing Dynasty. We find that a higher male-to-female sex ratio at sexual maturity is associated with a higher later-life mortality risk among men. This association is likely due to the long-term adverse consequences of stress caused by low mate availability at sexual maturity. We further find that a high sex ratio at sexual maturity mitigates the health benefits of marriage and exacerbates the health disadvantages of holding an official position in Qing China.

Suggested Citation

  • Zang, Emma & Zheng, Hui, 2018. "Does the sex ratio at sexual maturity affect men's later-life mortality risks? Evidence from historical China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 61-69.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:202:y:2018:i:c:p:61-69
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.02.024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953618300807
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.02.024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Masanori Kuroki, 2014. "The Effect Of Sex Ratios On Suicide," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(12), pages 1502-1510, December.
    2. Pierre-André Chiappori & Murat Iyigun & Yoram Weiss, 2009. "Investment in Schooling and the Marriage Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1689-1713, December.
    3. Shang-Jin Wei & Xiaobo Zhang, 2011. "The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(3), pages 511-564.
    4. Ying Bai & Ruixue Jia, 2016. "Elite Recruitment and Political Stability: The Impact of the Abolition of China's Civil Service Exam," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 677-733, March.
    5. Jason Fletcher & Ryne Marksteiner, 2017. "Causal Spousal Health Spillover Effects and Implications for Program Evaluation," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 144-166, November.
    6. Mastekaasa, Arne, 2005. "Sickness absence in female- and male-dominated occupations and workplaces," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(10), pages 2261-2272, May.
    7. Josh Angrist, 2002. "How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 997-1038.
    8. Jeanne Lafortune, 2013. "Making Yourself Attractive: Pre-marital Investments and the Returns to Education in the Marriage Market," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 151-178, April.
    9. Lei Jin & Felix Elwert & Jeremy Freese & Nicholas Christakis, 2010. "Preliminary evidence regarding the hypothesis that the sex ratio at sexual maturity may affect longevity in men," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(3), pages 579-586, August.
    10. Monden, Christiaan W. S. & van Lenthe, Frank & De Graaf, Nan Dirk & Kraaykamp, Gerbert, 2003. "Partner's and own education: does who you live with matter for self-assessed health, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(10), pages 1901-1912, November.
    11. Kieron James Barclay, 2013. "Sex ratios at sexual maturity and longevity," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(31), pages 837-864.
    12. Jerry Hausman, 2001. "Mismeasured Variables in Econometric Analysis: Problems from the Right and Problems from the Left," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 57-67, Fall.
    13. Bartley, M & Martikainen, P & Shipley, M & Marmot, M, 2004. "Gender differences in the relationship of partner's social class to behavioural risk factors and social support in the Whitehall II study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(9), pages 1925-1936, November.
    14. Wilson, Chris M. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2005. "How Does Marriage Affect Physical and Psychological Health? A Survey of the Longitudinal Evidence," Economic Research Papers 269622, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    15. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    16. Campbell, Cameron D. & Lee, James Z., 2009. "Long-term mortality consequences of childhood family context in Liaoning, China, 1749-1909," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1641-1648, May.
    17. Shang-Jin Wei & Xiaobo Zhang, 2011. "Sex Ratios, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Growth in the People's Republic of China," NBER Working Papers 16800, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Jaffe, Dena H. & Eisenbach, Zvi & Neumark, Yehuda D. & Manor, Orly, 2006. "Effects of husbands' and wives' education on each other's mortality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(8), pages 2014-2023, April.
    19. Murat Nick & P. Randall Walsh, 2007. "Building the Family Nest: Premarital Investments, Marriage Markets, and Spousal Allocations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 507-535.
    20. Dong, Hao & Lee, James Z., 2014. "Kinship matters: Long-term mortality consequences of childhood migration, historical evidence from northeast China, 1792–1909," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 274-283.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Kezhong & He, Fan & Ma, Yuanyuan, 2021. "Sex ratios and mental health: Evidence from China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Weiss, Yoram & Yi, Junjian & Zhang, Junsen, 2013. "Hypergamy, Cross-Boundary Marriages, and Family Behavior," IZA Discussion Papers 7293, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Fang, Li & Tian, Chuanhao, 2018. "Housing and marital matching: A signaling perspective," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 27-46.
    3. Zhang, Kezhong & He, Fan & Ma, Yuanyuan, 2021. "Sex ratios and mental health: Evidence from China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    4. Daiji Kawaguchi & Soohyung Lee, 2017. "Brides For Sale: Cross-Border Marriages And Female Immigration," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 633-654, April.
    5. V. Bhaskar & Ed Hopkins, 2016. "Marriage as a Rat Race: Noisy Premarital Investments with Assortative Matching," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 992-1045.
    6. Yawen Cheng & Dongmin Kong, 2023. "Educational Investment for Future Marriage? Evidence of Missing Girls from China," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 31(4), pages 173-199, July.
    7. Alena Bicakova & Stepan Jurajda, 2014. "The Quiet Revolution and the Family: Gender Composition of Tertiary Education and Early Fertility Patterns," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp504, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    8. Du, Qingyuan & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2016. "A Darwinian perspective on “exchange rate undervaluation”," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 111-138.
    9. Hanzhe Zhang, 2021. "An Investment-and-Marriage Model with Differential Fecundity: On the College Gender Gap," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(5), pages 1464-1486.
    10. Kota Ogasawara & Erika Igarashi, 2021. "The Impacts of the Gender Imbalance on Marriage and Birth: Evidence from World War II in Japan," Papers 2102.00687, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    11. Pierre‐Andre Chiappori & Murat Iyigun & Jeanne Lafortune & Yoram Weiss, 2017. "Changing the Rules Midway: The Impact of Granting Alimony Rights on Existing and Newly Formed Partnerships," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(604), pages 1874-1905, September.
    12. Chang, Simon & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2015. "Mating competition and entrepreneurship," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 292-309.
    13. Du, Qingyuan & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2013. "A theory of the competitive saving motive," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 275-289.
    14. Iyigun, Murat & Lafortune, Jeanne, 2016. "Why Wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles," IZA Discussion Papers 9671, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Tan, Zhibo & Wei, Shang-Jin & Zhang, Xiaobo, 2021. "Deadly discrimination: Implications of “missing girls” for workplace safety," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    16. Stopnitzky, Yaniv, 2012. "The Bargaining Power of Missing Women: Evidence from a Sanitation Campaign in India," MPRA Paper 37841, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Timothy Halliday & Sumner La Croix, 2013. "Sons, Daughters, and Labor Supply in Early Twentieth-Century Hawaii," Working Papers 201318, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    18. Ran Abramitzky & Adeline Delavande & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 124-157, July.
    19. Zhang, Hanzhe & Zou, Ben, 2020. "A Marriage-Market Perspective on Risk-Taking and Career Choices: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 2020-12, Michigan State University, Department of Economics.
    20. Robert A. Pollak, 2019. "How Bargaining in Marriage Drives Marriage Market Equilibrium," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 297-321.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:202:y:2018:i:c:p:61-69. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.