A Gender Curiosity: Parents with All Girls and No Boys Own More Stock

August 20, 2013 HBR's The Daily Stat For unknown reasons, married couples with only female children are about 6 percentage points more likely to own stock than those with both male and female offspring, according to a study of a large U.S. database by Vicki L. Bogan of Cornell University. The phenomenon is limited to stocks; there's no impact of offspring gender on a couple's likelihood of holding mutual funds, for example. Having only male children has no effect on stock ownership, except in the case of single mothers, who are more likely to own stock if they have only boys. SOURCE: Household investment decisions and offspring gender: parental accounting