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Partnership Status and the Human Sex Ratio at Birth

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Author Info
Karen Norberg
Abstract

If two-parent care has different consequences for the reproductive success of sons and daughters, then natural selection may favor adjustment of the sex ratio at birth according to circumstances that forecast later family structure. In humans, this partnership status hypothesis predicts fewer sons among extra-pair conceptions, but the rival "attractiveness" hypothesis predicts more sons among extra-pair conceptions, and the "fixed phenotype" hypothesis predicts a constant probability of having a son, regardless of partnership status. In a sample of 86,436 human births pooled from five US population-based surveys, I find 51.5% male births reported by respondents who were living with a spouse or partner before the child's conception or birth, and 49.9% male births reported by respondents who were not (X2=16.77, d.f. = 1, p<.0001). The effect was not explained by paternal bias against daughters, by parental age, education, income, ethnicity, or by year of observation, and was larger when comparisons were made between siblings. To my knowledge, this is the first direct evidence for conditional adjustment of the sex ratio at birth in humans, and could explain the recent decline in the sex ratio at birth in some developed countries.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10920.

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Date of creation: Nov 2004
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10920

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J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty

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  1. Hyung-Jai Choi & Jutta M. Joesch & Shelly Lundberg, 2005. "Work and Family: Marriage, Children, Child Gender and the Work Hours and Earnings of West German Men," IZA Discussion Papers 1761, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  2. Lin, Ming-Jen & Liu, Jin-Tan & Qian, Nancy, 2008. "More Women Missing, Fewer Girls Dying: The Impact of Abortion on Sex Ratios at Birth and Excess Female Mortality in Taiwan," CEPR Discussion Papers 6667, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Douglas Almond & Lena Edlund & Hongbin Li & Junsen Zhang, 2007. "Long-Term Effects Of The 1959-1961 China Famine: Mainland China and Hong Kong," NBER Working Papers 13384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Douglas Almond & Lena Edlund & Hongbin Li & Junsen Zhang, 2008. "Long-Term Effects of Early-Life Development: Evidence from the 1959-1961 China Famine," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Consequences of Demographic Change in East Asia, NBER-EASE Volume 19 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  5. Douglas Almond & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2008. "Health Capital and the Prenatal Environment: The Effect of Maternal Fasting During Pregnancy," NBER Working Papers 14428, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Qian, Nancy, 2006. "Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance," CEPR Discussion Papers 5986, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Yong Yoon, 2006. "Gender Imbalance: The Male/Female Sex Ratio Determination," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 253-268, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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