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Abstract
The hypothesis that a low ratio of men to women both destabilizes marriages and makes it more likely that young women will reproduce early outside of marriage was supported by an analysis of 42 societies for which the United Nations published detailed information on population structure and teen childbearing. This study attempted to replicate the earlier finding using sex ratios for 0- to 14-year-olds (as a proxy for teen sex ratios) and a larger sample of 185 countries. Several measures of economic development, population density, and latitude were used as control variables in the regression analyses. Teen births were inversely related to the sex ratio, to urbanization, and to latitude. The sex ratio explained 38% of the variance in teen birth rates, thus providing a clear replication of the earlier study. Early childbearing can be seen as an adaptive response to poor marital opportunity.
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