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A Theory for Why Latvian Women are Beautiful
Recently a colleague returned from a trip to Latvia and remarked on how beautiful the women were. A discussion ensued at which it was agreed that women in a number of other countries were also very beautiful but markedly less outgoing than the Latvians. As you may recall, beautiful Latvian women like to parade their beauty. My colleague further informed us that the latter event was not unique, having witnessed something similar himself.
Is my colleague's observation a mere statement of prurient preference? Does this kind of thing belong in a family blog? Don't worry, at Marginal Revolution we never serve our prurience without a little theory.
Sociosexuality is a concept in social psychology that refers to how favorable people are to sex outside of commitment. It can be measured by answers to questions such as "I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying "casual" sex with different partners" (agree strongly to disagree strongly) or "Sex without love is ok," as well as with objective measures such as the number of sexual partners a person has had. A low score indicates subjects who favor monogamous, long-term, high-investment relationships. A high score indicates subjects more favorable to sex for pleasure's sake alone. with less regard to commitment. On average, males have higher sociosexuality scores than females but sociosexuality scores for females vary widely across countries.
Why might female sociosexuality scores vary? One hypothesis is that in cultures with low operational sex ratios (the number of marriageable men/number of marriageable women) female sociosexuality will be higher. The argument is that when the relative supply of males is low, competition for mates encourages females to shift towards the male ideal, i.e. when supply is scarce the demanders must pay more. (Note that this theory can also explain trends over time, e.g. Pedersen 1991).
Ok, where does this get us? Well in Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe, Schmitt (2005) surveyed some 14,000 people on sociosexuality and he correlated female sociosexuality with the operational sex ratio. Here are the results:
Notice that Latvia has one of the highest rates of female sociosexuality in the 48 nations surveyed and the lowest sex ratio.
Thus, the theory is that Latvian women appeal more strongly to the male ideal because the number of marriageable men in Latvia is low relative to the number of women. Is it any wonder that my colleague found the Latvian women beautiful?
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 2, 2009 at 07:39 AM in Economics, Science, Travels | Permalink
Comments
I guess we forgot to ask the now obvious question: "What type of parade?"
Posted by: Andrew at Sep 2, 2009 7:46:41 AM
Hehe, Lithuanian women are very beautiful as well ... I had a girlfriend from Vilnius for a few weeks.
I think it also has something in common with the genetics of the Baltic nations. The Baltic people are very slim and quite tall on average, even though the local cuisines are awash in sugar, cream and flour.
Posted by: Marian Kechlibar at Sep 2, 2009 7:51:39 AM
P.S.: It is puzzling that Morocco and Turkey score higher on sociosexuality than Japan. I would expect Islamic societies to be somewhere at the bottom of the chart.
Hey, Morocco even scores higher than my country (the Czech republic). Given the level of promiscuity here, this is a bit strange.
Or, maybe the answers from Morocco reflect unfulfilled wishes of the youth, not "real action".
Posted by: Marian Kechlibar at Sep 2, 2009 7:54:59 AM
It'd be interesting to see this for Americans by race. Black Americans have extremely high incarceration rates, and thus low sex ratios, so by comparison, we should see Black women scoring high on this too. I'm not sure which ethnicities in the US have high sex ratios - Mexican immigrants were traditionally male, and if that is still the case (though it's less so I know than a while back) we should see lower scores for them, as well as possibly Asians.
Posted by: anony at Sep 2, 2009 8:12:19 AM
Another theory: The high degree of males killed in WW2 in Eastern Europe (and in the Baltics especially) led to intense selection pressures amongst the women when competing for husbands. Ugly women were somewhat out-competed, leading to a higher average beauty.
Posted by: jaduncan at Sep 2, 2009 8:18:52 AM
So what produces a low operational sex ratio? Are the ugly girls strangled at birth or what?
And where are the statistics for American cities and universities?
Posted by: capitalistimperialistpig at Sep 2, 2009 8:28:32 AM
Hmmm - unclear on the concept. I guess I meant are the excess males strangled at birth?
Posted by: capitalistimperialistpig at Sep 2, 2009 8:32:22 AM
If the theory is correct, and word gets out about this, men from over the world may relocate to establish equilibrium.
If I'm not mistaken, a while ago there was a map of the singles male to female ratio across the US featured on this blog. That could serve as another data set to test this theory.
Posted by: Nabob at Sep 2, 2009 8:37:56 AM
Baltic women are definitely more beautiful in general, the best looking women I have ever dated were from Lithuania. A couple other areas with a disproportionate share of beautiful women are the horn of Africa and Japan.
Posted by: mdb at Sep 2, 2009 8:55:01 AM
First of all, is the y-axis female attitudes? Why label the X-axis 80 to 110? No, seriously, why? We would never tolerate this in engineering. Is it sloppiness or is such cryptology encouraged in other sciences? Why not call it % women which would also flip the graph horizontally and the upward trend would be more apparent. Men would like to raise their own children, and higher tech societies might be more concerned with solid parenting than procreation, so those might contribute to the attitudes.
Also, commitment is one thing, but sex is about having kids. So, while women may answer questions related to sex for pleasure, probably worded from a liberal academic pov, while maybe what they really want is opportunities to have kids, or win husbands.
As for muslim countries, religion is there to fight the powerful cultural trends and underlying getyourfreakonomics. So, where they end up on the chart doesn't really indicate whether religion is winning or losing. In fact, the more in-your-face the rules, the more they are probably being broken.
Lastly, kind of gives a new meaning to the exclamation "Finnish him!"
Posted by: Andrew at Sep 2, 2009 8:58:03 AM
I visited that part of the world this year, and I actually thought Estonian women were more beautiful than their Latvian counterparts, although I don't think most men would have any complaints about any Baltic country.
Also interesting to me, as an Aussie, is how much higher the 'sociosexuality' is for women in New Zealand when compared to Australia. My experience with Kiwi girls suggests that this is indeed true, but I wonder why this might be, since our nations are so similar in other ways.
Posted by: 8020 at Sep 2, 2009 9:17:26 AM
hmm. I thought it was because Communism has been destroying sexual morality for 70 years, and balts are better looking than slavs -- blonde, more European looks. The only good looking Russians are the blonde ones anyway, and they are probably German or balt.
Balts probably have more access to western consumer goods to make themselves look a bit better. Makeup on a woman is a real art and takes years to learn and teach.
Posted by: charlie at Sep 2, 2009 9:46:01 AM
Interesting post. Does this data really support the "beauty" claim though? Sociosexuality would seem to involve signaling (to indicate sexual willingness, etc) to be effective, whereas beauty is something observed at a distance, without any interaction or observation - show me a photo of a Latvian woman and I'll tell you if I think she's beautiful or not, but will have no idea about her sexual openness.
I'd attribute the extra beauty in Latvia (and Brazil, etc) to 1) either having many of the traits we find beautiful to be generously distributed in the local gene pool or 2) a mental bias toward thinking the women are always beautiful in countries other than our own.
Posted by: Jason Swadley at Sep 2, 2009 10:11:08 AM
Taiwan and Bangladesh I hear has the hottest guys ;)
Posted by: anony at Sep 2, 2009 10:11:49 AM
I don't see that you have addressed why the women are beautiful(objective criteria???) at all, only why they like to flaunt it. I can imagine if the likelihood of breeding is more closely related to looks then a higher ratio of females would have the desired effect. But are the men so choosy, or so faithful?
Posted by: reason at Sep 2, 2009 10:12:14 AM
Jason, I think that may be the point when Alex says "Is it any wonder that my colleague found the Latvian women beautiful?" Being in Latvia and seeing some of their actions could lead one to find them more attractive than they would if they just saw a picture of them.
This reminds me of sites where you rate pictures of people. A beautiful woman not revealing much skin can have a 6.5 rating while an uglier woman barely wearing anything can have a 7.
Posted by: JH at Sep 2, 2009 10:17:43 AM
First of all, is the y-axis female attitudes? Why label the X-axis 80 to 110? No, seriously, why? We would never tolerate this in engineering. Is it sloppiness or is such cryptology encouraged in other sciences?
==
The relevant variable is a sex ratio, and sex ratios balance at 100 for genetic reasons (almost 50/50 a baby is born a girl, though slightly higher odds of a male, and a higher mortality rate for male babies that varies with income of the country). So, it makes sense to compare the correlation against 80 to 110 as that's the relevant variation in the variable.
Posted by: anony at Sep 2, 2009 10:18:38 AM
Why is the sex ratio so low in the Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia?
How, exactly, is the sex ratio, estimated?
What is the sex ratio of these countries if you restrict the sample
to people between the ages of 18 and 45?
Posted by: JDM at Sep 2, 2009 10:28:02 AM
i notice the lack of latin american countries in the scatter. they have reputedly some of the most beautiful women in the world. the reigning ms universe is latin american.
does that fit the theory?
Posted by: GabbyD at Sep 2, 2009 10:29:14 AM
If I'm not mistaken, a while ago there was a map of the singles male to female ratio across the US featured on this blog. That could serve as another data set to test this theory.
IIRC, the ratios on that chart were significantly affected by immigration, for example immigrant-heavy Los Angeles showed up as having many surplus men.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 2, 2009 10:35:05 AM
Amuzingly enough I just moved in a city with a very very low sex ration (Utrecht, NL). It's a service-oriented town with a large student community, so as could be expected, there is a clear majority of females (and most of them quite young). For a male point-of-view it seems like a buyer's market (even more so as a large number of the females are temporary migrants, i.e. students from all over Europe, and this should positively affect the "velocity of girls").
For the sake of it over lunch this afternoon I counted the people passing in front of me and segregated them by gender and I reach the rough but still amazing 3:10 ratio.
However the reverse is true. The girls are beautiful enough (if you are into blonds) but most of them are invoved in relationships at a distance. Moreover, for a reason I cannot figure yet, they are extremely anti-male and tend to violently fight off any flirtatious attempt. I tried to explain them that theoretically they should be more promiscuous, but it failed miserably.
Posted by: maharbbal at Sep 2, 2009 10:39:25 AM
I'm from Ukraine. Ukrainian women are quite beautiful as well, but according to the graph they're b1tches when it comes to sex. So I think your attempt at reversing the explanation doesnt' work cause it doesn't explain Ukraine's position on the graph. I'll go with the WWII hypothesis.
Posted by: Alex Golubev at Sep 2, 2009 10:45:05 AM
JH, agreed. But then it seems like we're measuring something other than beauty, such as "attractiveness" or "desireability" or "seductiveness." Subtle differences, but differences nonetheless.
Posted by: Jason Swadley at Sep 2, 2009 11:08:17 AM
Seems like it works the other way too. I haven't been to Bangladesh or Taiwan, but I did notice that South Korea and Hong Kong do have large numbers of unusually hot (gay) men.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 2, 2009 11:13:58 AM
Another theory: The high degree of males killed in WW2 in Eastern Europe (and in the Baltics especially) led to intense selection pressures amongst the women when competing for husbands. Ugly women were somewhat out-competed, leading to a higher average beauty.
It's an intriguing theory, and certainly sounds correct, but consider:
1. Britain suffered huge losses of young men in WWI, but unless I'm quite mistaken there was no big upsurge in feminine beauty a generation later (despite there being anecdotal evidence that many women never married due to all the missing men.)
2. Brazilian women are famously beautiful, yet their country has had scarcely any war deaths.
Posted by: Peter at Sep 2, 2009 11:15:35 AM
