Parents prefer daughters over sons in tough economic times, a study has revealed.
Carlson School of Management and Rutgers Business School researchers surveyed 629 people to see how economic conditions affect gender preferences for their offspring.
Participants read articles telling them the economy was either improving, getting worse or neutral. They were then asked to divide their assets between an imaginary son and daughter.
Those who read an article describing the economy as bad allocated about 60 percent of their assets to a daughter. But when economic conditions were expected to be neutral or improve, participants split their property nearly 50:50.
“Almost all parents say that they don’t favor one of their children over another, but economic recessions subconsciously lead parents to prefer girls over boys,” said lead researcher Kristina Durante, a marketing professor at Rutgers.
Another researcher linked the result to animal behavior.
“These findings in humans align well with the behavior of other animals,” said the school’s professor Vladas Griskevicius. “When resources are scarce, parents prefer females because they have a larger reproductive payoff. Almost every female child will produce some offspring, but many male children end up having zero offspring.”
The study also revealed how U.S. real GDP affected apparel spending for boys and girls between 1984 and 2011. When the economy was unfavorable, the ratio of apparel spending on girls to boys increased 19.8 percent compared with when the economy was fairly good.
“As the GDP decreased, relative spending on girls versus boys increased,” said Joseph Redden, associate professor at Carlson School. “When we survey parents, it’s very clear they want to treat their children equally. But if they’re relying on feelings for how they’re allocating resources, it’s very likely this bias is seeping in, especially when times are tougher and they don’t have money to do everything.”
The study will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research.