Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth.

ABSTRACT: Persistent interest lies in gender inequality, especially with regard to the favouring of sons over daughters. Economists are concerned with how privilege is transmitted across generations, and anthropologists have long studied sex-biased inheritance norms. There has, however, been no focused cross-cultural investigation of how parent-offspring correlations in wealth vary by offspring sex. We estimate these correlations for 38 wealth measures, including somatic and relational wealth, from 15 populations ranging from hunter-gatherers to small-scale farmers. Although small sample sizes limit our statistical power, we find no evidence of ubiquitous male bias, at least as inferred from comparing parent-son and parent-daughter correlations. Rather we find wide variation in signatures of sex bia

SUBMITTER: Borgerhoff Mulder M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6664137 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature