Female-biased sex ratios in urban centers create a "fertility trap" in post-war Finland.

ABSTRACT: Because sex ratios are a key factor regulating mating success and subsequent fitness both across and within species, there is widespread interest in how population-wide sex ratio imbalances affect marriage markets and the formation of families in human societies. Although most modern cities have more women than men and suffer from low fertility rates, the effects of female-biased sex ratios have garnered less attention than male-biased ratios. Here, we analyze how sex ratios are linked to marriages, reproductive histories, dispersal, and urbanization by taking advantage of a natural experiment in which an entire population was forcibly displaced during World War II to other local Finnish populations of varying sizes and sex ratios. Using a discrete time-event generalized linear mixed-effec

SUBMITTER: Pettay JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8442939 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul-Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature