Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T14:43:12.515Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biological, environmental and socioeconomic determinants of the human birth sex ratio in the Czech Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2019

Petr Houdek Open the ORCID record for Petr Houdek [Opens in a new window] ,
Ondřej Dvouletý Open the ORCID record for Ondřej Dvouletý [Opens in a new window]  and
Marek Pažitka
Petr Houdek*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
Ondřej Dvouletý
Affiliation:
Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic
Marek Pažitka
Affiliation:
Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Trivers–Willard Hypothesis (TWH) states that parents in good conditions bias the sex ratio towards sons and parents in poor conditions bias the sex ratio towards daughters. This study used data from a large nationwide population dataset (N=1,401,851) from the Czech Republic – a modern contemporary society. The study included air pollution and property prices in the TWH estimation, and had a more detailed focus on stillbirths than previous studies. Using official natality microdata from the Czech Statistical Office for years between 1992 and 2010 and data on levels of air pollution in the country over the same period, the study assessed whether the biological and socioeconomic status of mothers and environmental factors affected the sex of children. The results were largely insignificant and not robust across specifications. The presented epidemiological evidence suggests that stillbirths are randomly distributed in the Czech Republic and that the sex ratio is not affected by the socioeconomic status of mothers or by environmental characteristics.

Keywords

Trivers–Willard hypothesisSex ratioEconomic status
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 37 - 56
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abernethy, V and Yip, R (1990) Parent characteristics and sex differential infant mortality: the case in Tennessee. Human Biology 62(2), 279–290.Google ScholarPubMed
Almond, D and Edlund, L (2007) Trivers-Willard at birth and one year: evidence from US natality data 1983–2001. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274(1624), 2491–2496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, JL and Crawford, CB (1993) Trivers-Willard rules for sex allocation. Human Nature 4(2), 137–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, M and Milligan, K (2013) Boy-girl differences in parental time investments: evidence from three countries. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series No. 18893, doi: 10.3386/w18893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcellos, SH, Carvalho, LS and Lleras-Muney, A (2014) Child gender and parental investments in India: are boys and girls treated differently? American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 6(1), 157–189.Google ScholarPubMed
Bereczkei, T and Dunbar, RIM (1997) Female-biased reproductive strategies in a Hungarian Gypsy population. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 264(1378), 17–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betzig, L and Weber, S (1995) Presidents preferred sons. Politics and the Life Sciences 14(1), 61–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bharadwaj, P and Lakdawala, LK (2013) Discrimination begins in the womb: evidence of sex-selective prenatal investments. Journal of Human Resources 48(1), 71–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobak, M, Dejmek, J, Solansky, I and Sram, RJ (2005) Unfavourable birth outcomes of the Roma women in the Czech Republic and the potential explanations: a population-based study. BMC Public Health 5(1), 106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bobak, M, Hertzman, C, Skodova, Z and Marmot, M (1999) Socioeconomic status and cardiovascular risk factors in the Czech Republic. International Journal of Epidemiology 28(1), 46–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bobak, M, Pikhart, H, Pajak, A, Kubinova, R, Malyutina, S, Sebakova, H et al. (2006) Depressive symptoms in urban population samples in Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic. British Journal of Psychiatry 188(4), 359–365.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buss, D (2007) Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. 3rd Edition. Allyn & Bacon, Boston.Google Scholar
Buss, DM (1989) Sex differences in human mate preferences: evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12(1), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, EZ and Dalerum, F (2009) A Trivers-Willard effect in contemporary humans: male-biased sex ratios among billionaires. PLoS One 4(1): e4195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Catalano, RA (2003) Sex ratios in the two Germanies: a test of the economic stress hypothesis. Human Reproduction 18(9), 1972–1975.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chacon‐Puignau, GC and Jaffe, K (1996) Sex ratio at birth deviations in modern Venezuela: the Trivers‐Willard effect. Social Biology 43(3-4), 257–270.Google ScholarPubMed
Chase, RS (1998) Markets for communist human capital: returns to education and experience in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. ILR Review 51(3), 401–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clutton-Brock, TH and Lason, GR (1986) Sex ratio variation in mammals. Quarterly Review of Biology 61(3), 339–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crawford, C (1998) The theory of evolution in the study of human behavior: an introduction and overview. In Crawford, C, and Krebs, DL (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, London, pp. 3–41.Google Scholar
Cronk, L (1989) Low socioeconomic status and female-biased parental investment: the Mukogodo example. American Anthropologist 91(2), 414–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deaton, A (2003) Health, inequality, and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature 41(1), 113–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deaton, AS and Paxson, CH (1997) The effects of economic and population growth on national saving and inequality. Demography 34(1), 97–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dickemann, M (1979) The ecology of mating systems in hypergynous dowry societies. Social Science Information 18(2), 163–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubois, P and Rubio-Codina, M (2012) Child care provision: semiparametric evidence from a randomized experiment in Mexico. Annals of Economics and Statistics 105/106, 155–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Essock-Vitale, SM (1984) The reproductive success of wealthy Americans. Ethology and Sociobiology 5(1), 45–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eurostat (2012) Gini Coefficient of Equivalised Disposable Income– EU-SILC survey 2012. URL: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=tessi190 [Date accessed: 2017-02-01]Google Scholar
Fieder, M and Huber, S (2007) The effects of sex and childlessness on the association between status and reproductive output in modern society. Evolution and Human Behavior 28(6), 392–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folmer, V, Soares, JCM, Gabriel, D and Rocha, JBT (2003) A high fat diet inhibits δ-aminolevulinate dehydratase and increases lipid peroxidation in mice (Mus musculus). Journal of Nutrition 133(7), 2165–2170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freese, J and Powell, B (1999) Sociobiology, status, and parental investment in sons and daughters: testing the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis. American Journal of Sociology 104(6), 1704–1743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, MA and Mace, R (2003) Strong mothers bear more sons in rural Ethiopia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 270(Supplement 1), S108–S109.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodman, A and Koupil, I (2010) The effect of school performance upon marriage and long-term reproductive success in 10, 000 Swedish males and females born 1915–1929. Evolution and Human Behavior 31(6), 425–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grech, V (2018) Maternal educational attainment and sex ratio at birth by race in the United States, 2007–2015. Journal of Biosocial Science, doi: 10.1017/s0021932018000123CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guggenheim, CB, Davis, MF and Figueredo, AJ (2007) Sons or daughters: a cross-cultural study of sex ratio biasing and differential parental investment. Journal of the Arizona–Nevada Academy of Science 39(2) 73–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, D and Rubinfeld, DL (1978) The air pollution and property value debate: some empirical evidence. Review of Economics and Statistics 60(4), 635–638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayo, B and Seifert, W (2003) Subjective economic well-being in Eastern Europe. Journal of Economic Psychology 24(3), 329–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helle, S, Helama, S and Jokela, J (2008) Temperature-related birth sex ratio bias in historical Sami: warm years bring more sons. Biology Letters 4(1), 60–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, J (1984) Prestige and reproductive success in man. Ethology and Sociobiology 5(2), 77–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higashi, M and Yamamura, N (1994) Resolution of evolutionary conflict: a general theory and its applications. Researches on Population Ecology 36(1), 15–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopcroft, RL (2005) Parental status and differential investment in sons and daughters: Trivers-Willard revisited. Social Forces 83(3), 1111–1136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopcroft, RL (2006) Sex, status, and reproductive success in the contemporary United States. Evolution and Human Behavior 27(2), 104–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopcroft, RL (2015) Sex differences in the relationship between status and number of offspring in the contemporary U.S. Evolution and Human Behavior 36(2), 146–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houdek, P and Novakova, J (2016) Frozen cultural plasticity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39, doi: 10.1017/s0140525x15000151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houdek, P, Novakova, J and Stastny, D (2016) Ultrasociality: when institutions make a difference. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39, doi: 10.1017/s0140525x15001089CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jayachandran, S and Kuziemko, I (2011) Why do mothers breastfeed girls less than boys? Evidence and implications for child health in India. Quarterly Journal of Economics 126(3), 1485–1538.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jha, P, Kumar, R, Vasa, P, Dhingra, N, Thiruchelvam, D and Moineddin, R (2006) Low male-to-female sex ratio of children born in India: national survey of 1.1 million households. The Lancet 367(9506), 211–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanazawa, S (2003) Can evolutionary psychology explain reproductive behavior in the contemporary United States? Sociological Quarterly 44(2), 291–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanazawa, S and Apari, P (2009) Sociosexually unrestricted parents have more sons: a further application of the generalized Trivers–Willard hypothesis (gTWH). Annals of Human Biology 36(3), 320–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaňková, Š, Šulc, J, Nouzová, K, Fajfrlík, K, Frynta, D and Flegr, J (2007) Women infected with parasite Toxoplasma have more sons. Naturwissenschaften 94(2), 122–127.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keller, MC, Nesse, RM and Hofferth, S (2001) The Trivers–Willard hypothesis of parental investment: no effect in the contemporary United States. Evolution and Human Behavior 22(5), 343–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolk, M and Schnettler, S (2016) Socioeconomic status and sex ratios at birth in Sweden: no evidence for a Trivers–Willard effect for a wide range of status indicators. American Journal of Human Biology 28(1), 67–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koziel, S and Ulijaszek, SJ (2001) Waiting for Trivers and Willard: do the rich really favor sons? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 115(1), 71–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lappegård, T and Rønsen, M (2013) Socioeconomic differences in multipartner fertility among Norwegian men. Demography 50(3), 1135–1153.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luo, L, Ding, R, Gao, X, Sun, J and Zhao, W (2017) Socioeconomic status influences sex ratios in a Chinese rural population. PeerJ 5, e3546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mace, R (1996) Biased parental investment and reproductive success in Gabbra pastoralists. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 38(2), 75–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mathews, F, Johnson, PJ and Neil, A (2008) You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B: Biological Sciences 275(1643), 1661–1668.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morita, M, Go, T, Hirabayashi, K and Heike, T (2017) Parental condition and infant sex at birth in the Japan environment and children’s study: a test of the Trivers–Willard Hypothesis. Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science 8(2), 40–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, M, Grundy, E and Kalogirou, S (2007) The increase in marital status differences in mortality up to the oldest age in seven European countries, 1990–99. Population Studies 61(3), 287–298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nettle, D and Pollet, TV (2008) Natural selection on male wealth in humans. American Naturalist 172(5), 658–666. doi: 10.1086/591690CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nielsen, F (1994) Sociobiology and Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 20, 267–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisén, J, Martikainen, P, Myrskylä, M and Silventoinen, K (2018) Education, other socioeconomic characteristics across the life course, and fertility among Finnish men. European Journal of Population 34(3), 337–366.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norberg, K (2004) Partnership status and the human sex ratio at birth. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 271(1555), 2403–2410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oreopoulos, P, Page, M and Stevens, AH (2006) The intergenerational effects of compulsory schooling. Journal of Labor Economics 24(4), 729–760.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérusse, D (1993) Cultural and reproductive success in industrial societies: testing the relationship at the proximate and ultimate levels. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16(2), 267–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterka, M, Peterková, R and Likovský, Z (2004) Chernobyl: prenatal loss of four hundred male fetuses in the Czech Republic. Reproductive Toxicology 18(1), 75–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pikhart, H, Drbohlav, D, and Dzurova, D (2010) The self-reported health of legal and illegal/irregular immigrants in the Czech Republic. International Journal of Public Health 55(5), 401–411.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Polinsky, AM and Shavell, S (1975) The air pollution and property value debate. Review of Economics and Statistics 57(1), 100–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richerson, PJ and Boyd, R (2006) Not by Genes Alone, How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Royer, H (2004) What All Women (and Some Men) Want to Know: Does Maternal Age Affect Infant Health? URL: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/wp/wp68.pdf (accessed 1 January 2017).Google Scholar
Schnettler, S (2013) Revisiting a sample of U.S. billionaires: how sample selection and timing of maternal condition influence findings on the Trivers-Willard effect. PLoS One 8(2), e57446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sewell, WH and Shah, VP (1968) Parents’ education and children’s educational aspirations and achievements. American Sociological Review 33(2), 191–209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, VK and Huang, JC (1995) Can markets value air quality? A meta-analysis of hedonic property value models. Journal of Political Economy 103(1), 209–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trivers, RL and Willard, DE (1973) Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring. Science 179(4068), 90–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Valente, C (2015) Civil conflict, gender-specific fetal loss, and selection: a new test of the Trivers–Willard hypothesis. Journal of Health Economics 39, 31–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Veller, C, Haig, D and Nowak, MA (2016) The Trivers-Willard hypothesis: sex ratio or investment? Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B: Biological Sciences 283(1830), doi: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voland, E, Siegelkow, E and Engel, C (1991) Cost/benefit oriented parental investment by high status families. Ethology and Sociobiology 12(2), 105–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, JM (2002) Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Zaldívar, ME, Lizarralde, R and Beckerman, S (1991) Unbiased sex ratios among the Barí: an evolutionary interpretation. Human Ecology 19(4), 469–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar