Health and the sex ratio: A healthy relationship

Health and the sex ratio


A healthy relationship

The mere presence of women seems to bring health benefits to men

FOR hormone-addled teenagers, finding a date can often seem to be a matter of life and death. As it turns out, that may not be so far from the truth. In a paper in the August issue of Demography, a team of researchers led by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University reports that men who reach sexual maturity in an environment with few available women are at risk of dying sooner than their luckier confrères. The team points out that this finding may have important implications for public health in countries such as India and China, where sex ratios are skewed against women.



The idea that a dearth of available women hurts male longevity has been around for some time. There are several reasons why such a hypothesis makes sense. It is now well established that marriage has a beneficial effect on health and survival. Since women are traditionally the caregivers, these benefits accrue especially to men. If there are fewer potential mates around, men may delay marriage or forgo it entirely, losing out on these nuptial niceties. In addition, with more men and fewer single women, the intense competition for a mate is likely to be stressful. Such early-life stress is known to have effects on health that can last for years.



As reasonable as it all sounds, the hypothesis that a skewed sex ratio leads to shorter male lifespan has never been confirmed in humans. To put it to the test, Dr Christakis and his team made use of two unusual sets of demographic data. The first, known as the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, consists of a third of all those who graduated from high school in the state of Wisconsin in 1957—about 10,000 people. The male-to-female ratio in each person’s graduating class is known, and provides an indicator of the ratio during the sexually formative years of the study’s participants. The second set of data consists of 7½m white men who were enrolled in America’s Medicare programme in 1993. The researchers found the year and state in which each participant’s Social Security number was issued, which typically happened between his 15th and 25th birthdays. The sex ratio of his contemporaries was then calculated from state-level census data.



In the Wisconsin sample, Dr Christakis looked at those who had died before their 65th birthday. For the women, there was no significant relationship between their school’s sex ratio and their age of death. For the men, however, a significant relationship did emerge. A percentage-point increase in the male-to-female ratio of a man’s graduation class led to a percentage-point increase in his likelihood of dying before the age of 65. The Social Security data, moreover, suggest that a lack of women during men’s teenage years still haunts their health decades later.



The average white American male who was 65 in 1993 could expect to live another 15 years. Dr Christakis found, however, that those who had come of age around the most available women had a life-expectancy three months longer than that of the least favoured. Three months may not seem a huge difference, but according to Dr Christakis it is comparable to the benefit an elderly person can expect from exercising or losing some surplus weight.



In an American context, these results are, perhaps, no more than an interesting curiosity: at the age of 15, boys outnumber girls by about 4% and the ratio shrinks towards equality thereafter. In China, however, it is estimated that there are now 20% more men of marriageable age than women—the result of selective abortion and infanticide consequent upon the country’s “one-child” policy. That bodes ill for the future health of China’s menfolk.

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China's lucky man bags Volvo

Face value: Li Shufu


China's lucky man bags Volvo

Has the founder of Geely, an upstart carmaker, got what it takes to revive Volvo?

Safe car; risky betLI SHUFU, the chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, China’s biggest privately owned car firm, and from this week of Sweden’s Volvo Cars, likes to describe himself as the Henry Ford of China. There are some similarities. Both men began life down on the farm and both quickly discovered they were more interested in engineering and building businesses than ploughing fields.



Unlike Ford, however, who grew cranky and anti-Semitic as he aged, the 47-year-old Mr Li seems admirably grounded. Although one of China’s richest men, he dresses inexpensively and lives in a modest Beijing apartment. In conversation, he smiles and chuckles frequently. His only known eccentricity is a weakness for writing verse. He has published more than 20 poems on his personal website and another is woven into the carpet in the reception area of Geely’s Hanghzhou base, 100 miles (160km) southwest of Shanghai.



Mr Li’s career began with a school-graduation prize that he used to buy a bicycle and an old camera to take snaps of tourists visiting local beauty spots. By the late 1980s, with a master’s degree in engineering under his belt, he had moved on to making refrigerator parts. In 1994 he started making motorcycles, transforming a bankrupt state-owned manufacturer into one of China’s biggest private firms. In 1997 Mr Li’s thoughts turned to making cars. He says that he saw China “entering into an historic period” of growth and opportunity in which the demand for affordable transport would soar.



After a slow start, Geely, which means “lucky” in Mandarin, has the potential to compete with the joint ventures between Chinese and Western firms that dominate what is now the world’s biggest vehicle market. Only a handful of homegrown firms can say as much. Mr Li is hugely ambitious. Geely often takes the biggest stands at Chinese motor shows, filling them with both its prosaic current offerings and brash prototypes. The Shanghai Englon GE, a shameless knock-off of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, has a single throne-like seat at the rear. Over the next year or so Mr Li is promising a range of 25 cars spread out over five platforms and three brands. This year sales of Geely’s range of still mainly cheap, compact cars should reach 400,000, of which about 5% will be exported to countries with undemanding safety and emissions standards. In Cuba the Geely CK is now the car of choice for the police. By 2015 Mr Li aims to be producing 2m vehicles, half for export.



This week Mr Li realised another longstanding ambition: a deal he struck several months ago with Ford Motor Company to buy its Volvo subsidiary for $1.5 billion finally closed. It reminded investors just how bold and opportunistic Mr Li can be. A cash-strapped Ford had already sold its other European premium brands, and was determined to offload Volvo. But last year was hugely stressful for big car firms. Their survival was uncertain. Few were in the mood for making risky acquisitions. The lack of credible rival purchasers offered Mr Li his chance. Typically, he grabbed it.



Acquiring Volvo gives Geely an international profile and a degree of credibility it could never have achieved on its own. But it is a huge gamble. Although Volvo is currently close to breaking even (Ford says it is operating at “sustainable levels”), last year it lost $1.3 billion and sold only 335,000 cars. (At its peak in 2007, it sold 458,000.) Yet Volvo’s revenues are five times greater than Geely’s.



Mr Li knows that owning a sophisticated Western brand such as Volvo is a big step up for Geely. He says: “Volvo is Volvo and Geely is Geely. Volvo is premium, tasteful and low-profile, whereas Geely is a volume brand. We don’t want to put the two together. We will give Volvo independence and autonomy. By setting it free, we will help Volvo return to its glories in the 1960s and 1970s.” This week Stefan Jacoby, a Volkswagen executive who has been running the German group’s operations in America, was appointed as Volvo’s new boss. Volvo will continue to be headquartered in Gothenburg and a strong-looking board will set the firm’s strategy.



Armed with $900m of working capital from Geely and a commitment to build a Volvo factory in China, Mr Li’s target of driving sales to 600,000 by 2015 depends on the Swedish firm competing more strongly than in the past with the German premium brands, such as Audi and BMW, especially in China. Some Swedes worry that if things do not go well, Mr Li may cut costs by moving more production to China. (This happened with the London taxis made by Manganese Bronze, which Geely part-owns.) Some also fear that he will ransack Volvo’s intellectual property to boost Geely’s less sophisticated cars.



Mr Li insists that he will support Volvo’s management. He hopes that Geely will learn from Volvo’s global experience, and from its ability to innovate, particularly in the area of safety. Ford’s negotiators believe he will honour his promises. Despite a reputation for ruthlessness, the Ford team found him to be “very straightforward—once we had agreed something we never had to revisit it.”



A Ford executive says of Mr Li: “He’s a very ambitious individual, but he understands he has a lot to learn about doing business in the West. He will give Volvo autonomy because he knows it’s the only way to make it work. He’s more interested in growing businesses than in the details—he is very trusting of the people who work for him.”

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