Tall Tale?

You’ve perhaps heard about studies that suggest that more boys were born just ahead of the two World Wars.
There really hasn’t been a satisfactory explanation for that phenomena – other than the somewhat ominous suggestion that there was a connection between nature’s replenishment of that sex ahead of the devastation of war – until now.
A sociologist thinks he has an answer, according to a report in the Boston Globe. Apparently, a sample of records of soldiers who served in the British Army during World War I revealed that taller soldiers (by taller, the study indicated, on average, more than one inch taller) were more likely to survive. Moreover, in a more recent sample of American men, he also found that taller men were more likely to have male children.
Thus, the culling of shorter men (who were not as likely to have male children) from the population may have increased the number of boys born within a few years of the war. In fact, researcher Satoshi Kanazawa notes that “conservative estimates suggest that the one-inch height advantage alone is more than twice as sufficient to account for all the excess boys born in the UK during and after World War I.’
What remains unanswered – why are taller men were less likely to die in combat?

The report, “Big and Tall Soldiers Are More Likely to Survive Battle: A Possible Explanation for the ‘Returning Soldier Effect’ on the Secondary Sex Ratio,” is available at http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/11/3002

Worldwide Funds Enjoy Q407 Inflows

Net cash flow to mutual funds worldwide was $383 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007, with both long-term funds and money market funds experiencing aggregate net inflows, according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI).

Equity fund flows worldwide were $86 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $31 billion in the third quarter. The Americas accounted for $66 billion of equity flows in the fourth quarter and the Asia/Pacific region for $57 billion, compared to $14 billion and $48 billion, respectively, for the prior quarter.

ICI said Europe registered a net outflow of $37 billion from equity funds during the last three months of 2007, compared to a net outflow of $31 billion in the third quarter. Bond funds experienced a $28 billion net outflow, compared to a net outflow of $50 billion in the third quarter.

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The net outflow from bond funds was $46 billion in Europe in the fourth quarter, compared to a net outflow of $63 billion in the third quarter. Bond funds posted a net $33 billion inflow in the United States in the last quarter of 2007, up from $21 billion in the prior period.

Worldwide inflows to balanced funds were $45 billion in the fourth quarter, with $28 billion, or about three-fifths, attributable to the Americas. Flows into money market funds remained robust at $244 billion, down from $279 billion in the third quarter.

ICI said fund assets worldwide increased 1.6% to $26.2 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter. During the 2007 calendar year, fund assets grew 20.1%.

The latest ICI data report said growth in assets reported in U.S. dollars was boosted by depreciation of the dollar. For example, mutual fund assets in Europe on a U.S.-dollar-denominated basis increased 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2007, compared to a 2% decrease on a Euro-denominated basis.

On a U.S.-dollar-denominated basis, asset levels increased for both long-term and money market funds. Assets of equity funds fell 0.4%, with $12.5 trillion in assets at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007.

More information is available at http://www.ici.org/stats/mf/ww_12_07.html.

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