Male-biased sex ratios, marriage, and household composition in early twentieth-century Hawai‘i

Abstract

Immigration to Hawai‘i between 1870 and 1930 led to a more than six-fold increase in population and high and rapidly varying sex ratios in the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Caucasian populations of marriageable age. Using complete populations of the 1910, 1920, and 1930 Territorial Censuses of Hawai‘i, we estimate how male-biased ethnic sex ratios affected choices of second-generation men and women of marriageable age. Econometric results indicate that within-group and extra-group sex ratios impact the likelihood of males and females to marry, to marry a spouse from another ethnic group, to have children, and to live in larger households.