"帅哥荒"缘于漂亮妈妈多生女孩

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.

单身女孩总是抱怨英俊的男人很难找。

也许现在已经找到了它的科学根据，因为一项研究称，漂亮女人比相貌普通的女人更容易生女孩。

由于父母通常会将决定相貌的基因遗传给孩子，这可能会造成英俊的男人数量越来越稀少。

这也许可以解释为什么许多模特儿的女儿都女承母业，步入星光大道，例如雅斯门．勒．邦的女儿安伯和她签的是同一家模特儿经纪公司，杰瑞．霍尔的女儿伊丽莎白和乔治亚．贾格尔也都成为了模特儿。

伦敦经济学院的金泽聪博士分析了一项对英国1.7万人进行的终身跟踪调查数据，调查对象都是1958年3月在英国出生的。

这些人在7岁时，他们的老师对他们的吸引力做了评估。在他们45岁时，研究者向其询问了他们所生的孩子的性别。

那些被评为“有魅力的”人头胎生男生女的机会均等，但那些“没有魅力的”人生儿子的几率更大。

换句话说，根据《生殖科学》杂志的报道，漂亮的女人比那些长相平平的女人更容易生女孩。

先前一项涵盖了2000名美国人的研究显示，随着人类一代又一代的更替，女性会变得越来越漂亮，因为漂亮女人比长相普通的女人生的孩子更多，而且在她们的后代中女孩占的比例更大。

金泽博士认为，父母通常会生出能受益于自身基因的孩子。他说，美貌对于女性而言比对于男性好处更多，因此漂亮女人生女儿是值得的。

比起长相好的夫妇，那些体力更强、更有进取心的夫妇更容易生儿子，因为这些特质对男性更有用。

Vocabulary:

thin on the ground: 为数不多，稀少

better off (doing sth.): in a more favorable situation or circumstances（景况较佳）