Although it is widely acknowledged that the preference for sons is a barrier to a decline in fertility, considerable disagreement exists as to what actually happens to this preference when fertility declines in a region of low female autonomy. By analyzing the data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), we present evidence from northern India to show that the preference for sons is redu...

Studying biological and social determinants of mortality and fertility provides insight into selective pressures in a population and the possibility of trade-offs between shortand long-term reproductive success. Limited data is available from post-demographic transition populations. We studied determinants of reproductive success using multi-generational data from a large, population-based coho...

S ize at birth is strongly related to a number of maternal factors including parity, length of gestation, mother’s adult size, and mother’s own birth weight (1). The importance of genetic factors has come from studies of monozygous and dizygous twins, where estimates of heritability of birth weight range from 30 to 70% (2,3). Ounsted et al. (4), however, reported that there may be a stronger re...