Sex ratios in childhood in nineteenth-century America were skewed,
with a relative excess of males in agricultural and frontier areas, and the reverse in
urban and industrial areas. The pattern is consistent at the state, county, and
(where data are available) community and household levels. The most likely con
tributing causes are sex-specific migration of families according to the mix of
their children, migration of children themselves, and mortality patterns arising
from differential childcare based on the sex-specific economic value of children
to the household in agricultural versus urban settings. These patterns confirm
similar ones observed in developing countries and in the British Isles under condi
tions of early agricultural modernization, in which the relative value of female
labor declines in agricultural zones.
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