Girl Trouble.

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Do daughters cause divorce? A new study by the economists offspring are significantly more durable than those with female offspring. This is not true just in a society with a well-known preference for male children, such as Vietnam, where the parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy â€" its also true in the United States, where a couple whose only child is female is 4.4 percent more likely to divorce than a couple whose only child is a boy, and where a couple with three girls is nearly nine percent more likely to split up than a couple with three boys. Of the possible explanations for this phenomenon, simple gender bias (particularly among fathers) seems the most plausible, especially when one takes into account some of the study's other findings, for instance, men are more likely to marry divorced mothers of sons than they are to marry divorced mothers of daughters. Men are also more likely to marry a pregnant lover if the unborn child is revealed to be male. The bias in favor of boys extends even into the marriage bed: couples with multiple daughters are more likely to try for another baby than are couples with multiple sons.

â€" "The Demand for Sons: Evidence From Divorce, Fertility, and Shotgun Marriage," Gordon Dahl (University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (UCLA)