Sex ratios at birth among second-generation mothers of South Asian ethnicity in Ontario, Canada: a retrospective population-based cohort study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Son-biased sex ratios at birth (M:F), an extreme manifestation of son preference, are predominately found in East and South Asia. Studies have examined sex ratios among first-generation migrants from these regions, but few have examined second-generation descendants. Our objective was to determine whether son-biased sex ratios persist among second-generation mothers with South Asian ethnicity in Ontario, Canada. METHODOLOGY: A surname algorithm identified a population-based cohort of mothers with South Asian ethnicity who gave birth in Ontario between 1993 and 2014 (n=59 659). Linking to official immigration data identified births to first-generation mothers (ie, immigrants). Births not to immigrants were designated as being to second-generation mothers (ie, born in Canada) (n=10 273). Sex ratios and 95% CI were stratified by the sex of previous live births and by whether it was preceded by ≥1 abortion for both first-generation and second-generation mothers. RESULTS: Among mothers with two previous daughters and at least one prior abortion since the second birth, both second-generation mothers and first-generation mothers had elevated sex ratios at the third birth (2.80 (95% CI 1.36 to 5.76) and 2.46 (95% CI 1.93 to 3.12), respectively). However, among mothers with no prior abortion, second-generation mothers had a normal sex ratio, while first-generation mothers gave birth to 142 boys for every 100 girls (95% CI 125 to 162 boys for every 100 girls). CONCLUSION: Son preference persists among second-generation mothers of South Asian ethnicity. Culturally sensitive and community-driven gender equity interventions are needed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".