IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/10920.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Partnership Status and the Human Sex Ratio at Birth

Author

Listed:
  • 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

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Norberg, 2004. "Partnership Status and the Human Sex Ratio at Birth," NBER Working Papers 10920, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10920
    Note: CH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10920.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 299-351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Koji Yasuda & Tomoko Kinugasa & Shigeyuki Hamori, 2019. "An Empirical Analysis Of Marital Status In Japan," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(03), pages 773-798, June.
    2. Robert Kaestner, 1995. "The Effects of Cocaine and Marijuana Use on Marriage and Marital Stability," NBER Working Papers 5038, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Kota Ogasawara & Mizuki Komura, 2022. "Consequences of war: Japan’s demographic transition and the marriage market," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 1037-1069, July.
    4. Gordon Dahl, 2010. "Early teen marriage and future poverty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(3), pages 689-718, August.
    5. Alger, Ingela, 2021. "On the evolution of male competitiveness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 228-254.
    6. Guven, Cahit & Senik, Claudia & Stichnoth, Holger, 2012. "You can’t be happier than your wife. Happiness gaps and divorce," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 110-130.
    7. Howard Bodenhorn & Christopher Ruebeck, 2007. "Colourism and African–american wealth: evidence from the nineteenth-century south," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 20(3), pages 599-620, July.
    8. Ravi Prakash & Abhishek Singh, 2014. "Who Marries Whom? Changing Mate Selection Preferences in Urban India and Emerging Implications on Social Institutions," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 33(2), pages 205-227, April.
    9. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    10. Steven N. Durlauf & Ananth Seshadri, 2003. "Is assortative matching efficient?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(2), pages 475-493, March.
    11. repec:esx:essedp:762 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Azuara, Oliver, 2011. "Effect of universal health coverage on marriage, cohabitation and labor force participation," MPRA Paper 35074, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Eugene Choo & Shannon Seitz & Aloysius Siow, 2008. "The Collective Marriage Matching Model: Identification, Estimation and Testing," Working Papers tecipa-340, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    14. Lepinteur, Anthony & Flèche, Sarah & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2016. "My Baby Takes the Morning Train: Gender Identity, Fairness, and Relative Labor Supply Within Households," IZA Discussion Papers 10382, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Du, Qingyuan & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2013. "A theory of the competitive saving motive," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 275-289.
    16. Steven F. Koch, 2005. "Love and Addiction: The Importance of Commitment," Working Papers 200516, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    17. Nekby, Lena, 2010. "Inter- and Intra-Marriage Premiums Revisited: It’s probably who you are, not who you marry!," Research Papers in Economics 2010:23, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    18. Helen V. Tauchen & Ann Dryden Witte & Sharon K. Long, 1985. "Domestic Violence: A Non-random Affair," NBER Working Papers 1665, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Tetyana Zubro, 2014. "Vnútropolitické Determinanty Krízovej Situácie Na Ukrajine," Almanach (Actual Issues in World Economics and Politics), Ekonomická univerzita, Fakulta medzinárodných vzťahov, vol. 9(1), pages 73-85.
    20. 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.
    21. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2005-046 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Pavel Jelnov, 2020. "Health Economics of Genetic Distance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(3), pages 1970-1976.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

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

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:10920. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.