Thought experiment:
- Take a very large group of men
- Rank them by physical attractiveness
- Count their children of both genders
- Compare the results of 3 for the top and bottom quartiles (deciles, whatever) established in 2.
My guess is that with a large enough sample, there would be a difference. I would expect better-looking men to have more male children than female. I wonder if someone else has already done this experiement?
Apparently not:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201101/beautiful-people-have-more-daughters
More physically attractive people of *either* gender tend to have more daughters. This is supposed to be because looks are more advantageous to women than men. I am a little surprised that the genome (exome, proteome, whatever) for male beauty and that for female beauty are thought to be the same, but I suppose it makes sense – I guess there’s not much on the Y-chromosome.
So, do the sex-determining mechanisms follow the beauty-determining mechanisms around in evolutionary time? Or are they somehow regulated by another mechanism that is sensitive to beauty?
Interestingly, the very rich have more grandsons than granddaughters:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004195