A new University of California study finds a rise in miscarriages of frail male children. Why? Look:

The researchers, led by Ralph Catalano and Claire Margerison Zilko, write that the previously reported health effects of economic insecurity may “represent only the tip of a more fundamental ‘adaptation iceberg.'”
Specifically, their research supports the argument that when women receive signals that times are tough, their bodies retain the tendency, shaped over thousands of years through natural selection, to reject offspring less likely to survive.

To our ancient ancestors, those signs would presumably be signals of impending drought or other natural disaster, which would indicate a coming food scarcity. Catalano and colleagues concluded the closest thing we have today is the announcement of mass layoffs at major employers, which impacts “the degree to which the larger population perceives a threat to its economic security.”
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