High sex ratios at birth (108 boys to 100 girls or higher) are seen in China, Taiwan, South Korea and parts of India and Viet Nam. The imbalance is the result of son preference, accentuated by declining fertility. Prenatal sex detection with ultrasound followed by second trimester abortion is one of the ways sex selection manifests itself, but it is not the causative factor. Advocates and gover...

Preference for phenotypic similarity in assortative mating may be influenced by either a preference for self-similarity or parent-similarity. The aim of the current study was to assess whether people's preference in face attractiveness is influenced by resemblance to the opposite sex parent's face (parental phenotype) or their own face (self-based phenotype or "self-imprinting"). We used comput...

OBJECTIVE Fetal reduction (FR) in multiples dramatically improves outcomes. We prioritize FR decisions for health and historically declined to factor gender. As male preferences apparently diminished, our bioethicist encouraged a re-evaluation. METHODS Three hundred ninety-six patients reducing triplets or twins were categorized as 3➔2, 3➔1, and 2➔1, Major (M) anomaly or minor (m) anomaly, sa...

The sex of surviving children is an important determinant of reproductive behaviour in South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. This cohort study evaluates the role of the sex of children on reproductive intentions and subsequent behaviour of women in urban slums of Karachi, Pakistan. The analysis is based on two rounds of surveys conducted in 1990-91 and 1995 of a cohort of married wo...

We present a general model for the effect of sex linkage on the evolution of reinforcement of mating preferences on an island. We find that the level of reinforcement can vary up to 80% depending on the mode of inheritance of the female preference and male trait. When reinforcement is driven mainly by selection in the male trait and intrinsic hybrid incompatibilities are weak, sex-linked prefer...

Adolescent stress exposure increases the likelihood of alcohol misuse and use disorder (AUD) in adulthood; however, it is not clear how genetic environmental factors interact to increase risk. This study examined adolescent social isolation affects adult binge-like ethanol drinking levels hormone corticosterone male female mice with a predisposition toward high preference (HAP). Twenty-eight HA...

This paper deals with a strategic issue in the stable marriage model with complete preference lists (i.e., a preference list of an agent is a permutation of all the members of the opposite sex). Given complete preference lists of nmen over n women, and a marriage μ, we consider the problem for finding preference lists of n women over n men such that the men-proposing deferred acceptance algorit...

There is accumulating evidence of condition-dependent mate choice in many species, that is, individual preferences varying in strength according to the condition of the chooser. In humans, for example, people with more attractive faces/bodies, and who are higher in sociosexuality, exhibit stronger preferences for attractive traits in opposite-sex faces/bodies. However, previous studies have ten...

The preference to seek out a sexual partner of the opposite sex is robust and ensures reproduction and survival of the species. Development of female-directed partner preference in the male is dependent on exposure of the developing brain to gonadal steroids synthesized during critical periods of sexual differentiation of the central nervous system. In the absence of androgen exposure, a male-d...

In the backdrop of the debate on missing women (Oster, 2005), this paper empirically tests for two competing explanations of the increasing sex ratio at birth (SRB) in India: prevalence of hepatitis B and human intervention in the form of sex selective abortion or female infanticide. Estimating a simple model of male-preferring stopping rule using the method of maximum likelihood with data from...