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Title: Hepatitis B and Sex Ratios at Birth: Fathers or Mothers?

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2007

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Abstract: A number of papers have argued that, at the population level, parental Hepatitis Bcarrier status is associated with a higher offspring sex ratio (more boys) (Hesser,Economidou and Blumberg, 1975; Drew, London, Blumberg and Serjeanston, 1982;Drew, Blumberg and Robert-Lamblin, 1986; Chahnazarian, Blumberg and London,1988; Cazal, Lemiare and Robinet-Levy, 1976; Livadas et al, 1979; Oster, 2005). Thesepapers suggest that parents who are carriers of Hepatitis B have roughly 1.5 boys forevery girls. Recent large-scale, micro-level evidence from Taiwan (Lin and Luoh, 2006)presents evidence that hepatitis B carrier status among mothers is associated with onlya very tiny increase in the probability of a male birth. Both arguments could be correctif it was paternal, not maternal, hepatitis carrier status that drives higher offspring sexratios. We present three pieces of evidence that this may be the case. First, using two ofthe original datasets on this topic we find that fathers infection is more stronglycorrelated with sex ratio than mothers infection. Second, in population-level data fromTaiwan we find that paternal cohort infection rates are more important that maternalcohort infection rates. Finally, we show using the IPUMS dataset that children born inthe United States to men born in China are more likely to be boys, but this finding doesnot hold for children born to women from China.

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Authors: Oster, Emily; Blumberg, Baruch

Publisher: University of Chicago

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality, Gender, Health, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: United States