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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2004

Masters Theses

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Human Geography

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Toward A Geography Of Hormones: The Human Sex Ratio At Birth In The United States 1970-1995, Michael C. Meyers Aug 2004

Toward A Geography Of Hormones: The Human Sex Ratio At Birth In The United States 1970-1995, Michael C. Meyers

Masters Theses

It has been hypothesized that humans may exert facultative, adaptive control over their sex of their offspring through the action of the endocrine system. No conclusive evidence of this has been found, although varying hormonal levels in parents at the time of conception may partly influence the sex of the child (James 1986, 1987b, 1999). A decline in the human sex ratio at birth (SRB) observed in the U.S. and some other countries has been attributed by some investigators to widespread environmental exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals.

The many factors hypothesized to influence the SRB make testing this attribution difficult, …