GEOGRAPHIC CLUSTERING OF THE SECONDARY SEX RATIO IN JAPAN: ASSOCIATION WITH DEMOGRAPHIC ATTRIBUTES

Abstract

The secondary sex ratio (SSR) has been suggested to decrease with adverse physical and psychological environments. Previous studies have focused on reduced SSR under adverse conditions, such as war, terrorism attack and earthquake, but few studies have investigated fluctuations in SSR in moderately adverse environments. This study analysed municipality-level vital statistics records in Japan collected between 1998 and 2002 to identify high-SSR clusters and low-SSR clusters with spatial-scan statistics. In 999 runs of simulation, high- and low-SSR clusters were detected but fewer than 950 times, indicating that SSR was not geographically clustered in Japan if type I error of 5% was adopted. Explorative analyses comparing demographic attributes between high-SSR clusters and low-SSR clusters that were detected more than 500 times in 999 runs of simulation, showed that rate of spontaneous abortion, rate of artificial abortion and divorce rate were higher in low-SSR clusters, while male life expectancy, female life expectancy and total fertility rate were higher in a high-SSR cluster.