Good-looking couples likelier to have daughters

X-factor

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and author of Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature, also argues that beauty is a stronger predictor of reproductive success for women than men.

About 17,000 babies born in Britain in March 1958 were followed up at various points in their lives, including at age seven, when they were rated as attractive or unattractive by their teachers, and at 45, when they were asked to record the age and sex of their children.

Kanazawa found that while the children who were rated as attractive — 84 per cent of the sample — were equally likely to have a son or a daughter as their first child, the unattractive children were more likely to have sons.

“Physical attractiveness is one of the strongest determinants of women’s mate value,” the Courier Mail quoted him as saying.

He believes that the trend could be driven by the relative value of attractiveness in men and women. Men tend to rate attractiveness in women as important when seeking both long-term relationships and casual affairs. Women tend to rate physical attractiveness highly only for short-term relationships, ranking wealth and status as more important in the long term.