Spectrum of Sex Ratios in Denmark

Abstract

The sex ratio (SR) is usually defined as the number of males per 100 females within an area or, as in this study, the proportion of males among all births (PM). It has been observed that among newborns, there is typically a slight excess number for boys compared to girls. Consequently, the SR becomes greater than 100, which is around 106 in number, and the chance of new born males is around 0.515. Attempts have been made to identify the factors those are influencing the level of the PM. Previous researches stated that where prenatal losses are low, as in the Western countries, the SRs are also become high around 105 to 106, but in areas where the frequencies of prenatal losses are relatively high then the SRs are found to be low around 102. Later on several researches have focused on temporal, regional and seasonal fluctuations of SR. In general, factors that affect the SR within the families remain poorly understood. Attempts to identify such factors in national birth registers are also remained to be unsuccessful. Recently, SR studies have mainly concentrated on the identification of general but occasional factors. In this study, we tried to identify the effects of issues like maternal age and type of delivery (live- and stillborn, singletons and multiples) to identify the controlling parameters of sex ratio during birth. Post experimental outcome showed that there is no significant difference between live- and stillborn and maternal age had as no significant effect for controlling sex ratio. The SR is higher among singletons than that of multiples, but there is no significant difference obtained in SR between twins and triplets. Among singletons the temporal differences are non-significant, but for twins and triplets, significant temporal differences were obtained.