Fewer boys born in tough times
I thought I add to the observation made by Dallas from one of Darly’s picture from the Lao school. Dallas had noticed that most of the children were girls. But from Darly’s statistics ( 0-14 years: 41% (male 1,374,966/female 1,362,945) there actually seem to be more young boys then girls. Other have also commented and thought maybe the boys were out tending household chores or just plain skipping school. Those are all possible reasons.
What I did find out was an interesting study done by Ralph Catalano, from the University of California, Berkeley back in 2003. hard times are especially hard on pregnant women. Leading to more miscarriages and premature births.
of the TimesOnline sums it up best, “STRESS appears to have another intriguing, largely unexplained, effect on biology: it can affect the gender of offspring. The effect is well-documented in certain bird species, including Japanese quail, which, it was reported last week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, produce proportionally more daughters when levels of the stress hormone corticosterone are raised. Human births appear to respond to stress in the same way. One of the best-known researchers in this area is Ralph Catalano, at the University of California, Berkeley, who has published evidence that both the September 11 attacks and the fall of East Germany temporarily pushed down the birth rate of boys. In 1991, after unification, the ratio of boys to girls born in the former East Germany dropped to its lowest since 1946. In the months after September 11, 2001, a higher-than-expected number of male foetuses were miscarried and fewer baby boys born. Professor Catalano has also found that lean economic times spell fewer boys. In tough times, he says, “it’s not in the interest of the herd to have weak males around”.
So this probably means more baby girls are being born in parts of the US and other places that are going through hard times. Personally, I have noticed that most of the people I’ve known have given birth to only baby girls. That’s about 5 girls in all, and one couple had twin baby girls. Wow! Maybe 20 years from now there will be less war and crime in a world run by females. OK, that would be a stretch. I think boys are great too, life without them would seem a bit off course.
Note: Cute little girl and baby boy picture from Australian Catholic University.
Perhaps in less developed countries there are more girls than boys born because of a less well balanced diet. I’ve heard about a research that came out earlier this year that said if you want to have a baby boy then you must eat a well balanced breakfast. The key is breakfast and not about eating three square meals per day.
Many people in Laos I know don’t have the time to eat breakfast or a really healthful breakfast.
Another interesting note to look at is the infant mortality rate for Laos.
Infant mortality rate:
total: 79.61 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 88.9 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 69.88 deaths/1,000 live births (2008 est.)
Salat and Darly,
Thanks for the numbers. That is very good data you both gathered. The mortality rate is almost 10 times of that USA.