Secular trends and latitude gradients in sex ratios at birth in the former Soviet Republics

Title:

Secular trends and latitude gradients in sex ratios at birth in the former Soviet Republics
Secular trends and latitude gradients in sex ratios at birth in the former Soviet Republics

Creator:

Grech, Victor

Contributor:

Grech, Victor

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:bmc14059442-457e292e-36fd-4446-a76c-bc4509fa5e31
uuid:bmc14059442-457e292e-36fd-4446-a76c-bc4509fa5e31
local:bmc14059442
https://www.lfhk.cuni.cz/Faculty/Publications/Acta-Medica/Archive/2013/
local: bmc14059442

Subject:

porodnost--trendy, interpretace statistických dat, ženské pohlaví, lidé, novorozenec, mužské pohlaví, poměr pohlaví, and Světová zdravotnická organizace

Type:

model:article, article, Text, časopisecké články, and TEXT

Format:

print, text, and regular print

Description:

BACKGROUND: The male-female ratio at birth (M/F: male births divided by total births), which is anticipated to approximate 0.515, has been shown to exhibit latitude gradients and secular trends. METHODS: Annual national data for male and female live births for the 15 countries that comprise the former Soviet Union were obtained from the World Health Organisation for the period 1980-2009 (115,167,569 total live births) and analysed with contingency tables. Spearman correlation was also carried out to compare percentage annual gross domestic product growth (GDP%--downloaded from the World Bank) and M/F. In this context, GDP% is used as a measure for economic hardship or wellbeing within the populace. RESULTS: There have been overall highly significant secular increases in M/F (p < 0.0001) in the countries and regions investigated. M/F is significantly lower in the three more northern regions (Russian Federation, Baltic States and Central Asia. M/F 0.51324, 0.51335-0.51314) than the two more southern regions (Southern Caucasus and Eastern Europe. M/F 0.51654, 0.51635-0.51672). There was a male excess of 113,818 live births.There was a significant positive correlation between GDP% and M/F for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. There was a significant negative correlation in Estonia. CONCLUSION: Previous studies have shown that improving socioeconomic conditions increase M/F, and the converse has also been demonstrated. This is a potential influence in this geographical area since this region has relatively recently emerged from communist rule and experienced an overall economic upturn, but is only partially supported using GDP%. Another factor may be the selective termination of female pregnancies. The latitude gradient parallels that of neighbouring Europe but no theory has been put forward to convincingly explain this finding to date. and V. Grech

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

Evropa and SSSR

Relation:

Acta medica (Hradec Králové) / Universitas Carolina, Facultas Medica Hradec Králové--MED00010947

Source:

Acta medica (Hradec Králové) | 2013 Volume:56 | Number:4

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false

Date:

2013