America
Daughters favoured over sons in hard times
New York, June 30
Parents financially favour daughters over sons when they expect tough economic times ahead, a research said.
A
study found participants preferred to enroll a daughter rather than a
son in beneficial programmes, preferred to give a US Treasury bond to a
daughter rather than to a son, and bequeathed a greater share of their
assets to female offspring in their will when they perceived economic
conditions to be poor.
"Almost all parents say that they do not
favour one of their children over another, but economic recessions
subconsciously lead parents to prefer girls over boys," said lead author
Kristina Durante, professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School in
the US.
In one experiment, 629 participants read a news article
that described the economy as either improving, getting worse, or
neutral.
They then were asked to make a will dividing their
assets between an imaginary son and daughter as well as assign one to a
beneficial programme.
Those led to believe tough economic times
were ahead, allocated nearly 60 percent of their available resources to
the girl compared to a nearly 50/50 split between the two children when
economic conditions were viewed as either neutral or prosperous.
"These
results in humans align well with the behaviour of other animals," said
Vladas Griskevicius from Carlson School of Management, University of
Minnesota.
"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."
Another experiment explored the boundaries of
age on resources allocation. As expected, the bias toward females was
stronger as the children moved closer to reproductive age.
The study is forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research.