1976/12/01 by John Hartung, Andrew Abelson, Andrew E. Abelson +14 · 5 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences #Culture, Economy, and Development Studies
paper · doi:10.1086/201799
Greater reproductive variance among males than among females is presented as a component of natural selection's influence in determining preferential treatment of males in the inheritance of wealth. In conjunction, the transmission of sex chromosomes and their attendant probabilities of carrying genes identical by descent are traced for several generations in order to illustrate a male bias in species whose male sex is heterogametic (XY) while the female sex is homogametic (XX). The effect of this bias on coefficients of relationship (direct and additive) leads to the hypothesis that the transmission of wealth (seen as an arbitrarily bestowable fitness advantage) along the male line is more efficient, in terms of maximizing ancestral fitness, than transmission along the female line.