Parental Height and the Sex Ratio

Jean-Louis Arcand and Matthias Rieger

No 05-2011, IHEID Working Papers from Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies

Abstract: This paper tests the generalized Trivers Willard hypothesis, which predicts that parents with heritable traits that increase the relative reproductive success of males compared to females will have relatively more males than females. As in Kanazawa (2005) we test if taller mothers have relatively more sons in a pooled sample of Demographic Health Surveys(DHS) from 46 developing countries. Despite using a rich dataset and an array of statistical models that address some of the concerns raised by Gelman (2007), we provide further evidence against the hypothesis.

Keywords: Evolutionary psychology; sex ratio; Generalized Trivers Willard hypothesis (gTWH); height (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2011-02
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp05-2011

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