Cesarini, David () (Department of Economics, MIT) Lindqvist, Erik () (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics) Wallace, Björn () (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
Helle et al. (2002) used data from Finnish parish records to study the cost of bearing sons vis-à-vis daughters in terms of postmenopausal longevity and found a large and significant cost associated with sons. In this paper, we replicate and extend their analysis on a larger dataset of pre-modern Swedish women and find no evidence of a negative relative impact of sons. Neither do we find any evidence for the resource competition hypothesis put forth by Van de Putte et al. (2004), despite the relative poverty of our study population. This suggests that the effects found in Helle et al. (2002) were not a general feature of life in pre-modern populations. Finally, we raise some concerns regarding the methodology used and inferences made in previous studies on the topic.
Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
Length: 20 pages Date of creation: 26 Jan 2007 Date of revision: Publication status: Forthcoming in Annals of Human Biology. Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0651
Contact details of provider: Postal: The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46-(0)8-736 90 00 Fax: +46-(0)8-31 01 57 Email: Web page: http://www.hhs.se/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Helena Lundin).