“Do Baby Girls Cause Divorce? “

That was the question explored by economists on the Freakonomics podcast.

Here is a description of the podcast:

This episode was inspired by a question from a reader named John Dolan-Heitlinger, who wrote the following:

My wife has observed that in marriages where there is a son there is less chance of the husband leaving the marriage.

I wonder if that is true.

Thanks for your consideration.

Mr. Dolan-Heitlinger asks, and we deliver. And his wife, as it turns out, is right. In a paper called “The Demand for Sons,” the economists Enrico Moretti and Gordon B. Dahl examined differences in marital rates based on whether a first-born child is a son or daughter. Here are some of their findings:

• Couples who conceive a child out of wedlock and find out that it will be a boy are more likely to marry before the birth of their baby.
• Parents who have first-born girls are significantly more likely to be divorced.
• Fathers are significantly less likely to be living with their children if they have daughters versus sons.
• In any given year, roughly 52,000 first-born daughters younger than 12 years (and all their siblings) would have had a resident father if they had been boys.
• Divorced fathers are much more likely to obtain custody of sons compared to daughters.