Social status and the secondary sex ratio: new evidence on a lingering controversy

Because women are more likely than men to use social status as a criterion in mate selection, evolutionary theory has led to the hypothesis that higher proportions of males will be born to parents of high social status than to parents of low status. To date, the research that has tested this deduction has not provided consistent support. This could be partly due to the small sample size in several of the studies. The present study tested the hypothesis using 6 different social status measures provided by more than 11,000 United States and Canadian college students. The offspring sex ratio was measured by asking the students their own sex plus that of each of their siblings. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that parental social status has any significant effect on the sex ratio of offspring.