"帥哥荒"緣於漂亮媽媽多生女孩

Single girls have always grumbled that good-looking men are difficult to find.

But science may have just proved them right – because beautiful women are more likely to have daughters than their plainer counterparts, according to a study.

As parents tend to pass on genes that determine looks, this could result in handsome men becoming rather thin on the ground.

And it may also explain why many models have daughters who follow in their glamorous footsteps – such as Yasmin Le Bon, who is signed to the same modelling agency as daughter Amber, and Jerry Hall, whose daughters Elizabeth and Georgia Jagger have both taken to the catwalk.

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics, analysed data from a survey of 17,000 babies born in Britain in March 1958 and tracked them throughout their lives.

At the age of seven, their attractiveness was rated by their teachers. When they reached 45, they were asked about the gender of any children they had.

Those rated as attractive were equally likely to have a son or daughter as their first child – but the unattractive sorts were more likely to have a son.

Put another way, the beautiful women were more likely to have daughters than those who were less blessed in the looks department, the journal Reproductive Sciences will report.

A previous study of 2,000 Americans suggested that women are becoming more beautiful over the generations because attractive women have more children than plain ones – and a higher proportion of their offspring are girls.

Dr Kanazawa believes that parents tend to produce children who benefit from their own attributes. Beauty, he says, is of more benefit to a woman than a man, and so it pays for attractive women to have daughters.

But couples blessed with strength and aggression rather than looks are better off having boys, as these characteristics are of more use to males.

單身女孩總是抱怨英俊的男人很難找。

也許現在已經找到了它的科學根據，因爲一項研究稱，漂亮女人比相貌普通的女人更容易生女孩。

由於父母通常會將決定相貌的基因遺傳給孩子，這可能會造成英俊的男人數量越來越稀少。

這也許可以解釋爲什麼許多模特兒的女兒都女承母業，步入星光大道，例如雅斯門•勒•邦的女兒安伯和她籤的是同一家模特兒經紀公司，傑瑞•霍爾的女兒伊麗莎白和喬治亞•賈格爾也都成爲了模特兒。

倫敦經濟學院的金澤聰博士分析了一項對英國1.7萬人進行的終身跟蹤調查數據，調查對象都是1958年3月在英國出生的。

這些人在7歲時，他們的老師對他們的吸引力做了評估。在他們45歲時，研究者向其詢問了他們所生的孩子的性別。

那些被評爲“有魅力的”人頭胎生男生女的機會均等，但那些“沒有魅力的”人生兒子的機率更大。

換句話說，根據《生殖科學》雜誌的報道，漂亮的女人比那些長相平平的女人更容易生女孩。

先前一項涵蓋了2000名美國人的研究顯示，隨着人類一代又一代的更替，女性會變得越來越漂亮，因爲漂亮女人比長相普通的女人生的孩子更多，而且在她們的後代中女孩佔的比例更大。

金澤博士認爲，父母通常會生出能受益於自身基因的孩子。他說，美貌對於女性而言比對於男性好處更多，因此漂亮女人生女兒是值得的。

比起長相好的夫婦，那些體力更強、更有進取心的夫婦更容易生兒子，因爲這些特質對男性更有用。

Vocabulary:

thin on the ground: 爲數不多，稀少

better off (doing sth.): in a more favorable situation or circumstances（景況較佳）