Why Are More Boys Born At The End Of Wars?
More boys are born than girls: this is a fact. In the western world the ‘sex ratio’ is around 105 boys for every 100 girls, but this changes through history. And rather remarkably, it peaks at the end of wars: another fact. So why are more boys born at the end of wars? Now we have to leave the comfort of facts, and are left with contested opinions.Reliable official statistics on births in England and Wales have been available since the late 1830s, and the graph below shows the sex ratio from then until 2012. There are clear spikes at the end of the two World Wars, but also around 1973, while there is also a steady dip towards the end of the nineteenth century – we’ll come to that later.
