Abstract
The “problem of the sexes” has been one of trying to reconcile inconsistent male and female demographic rates. The present paper deals with that question in the context of a two-sex nuptiality-mortality life table. A “rectangular” population, with equal numbers of persons in each age-sex group, is introduced as a standard, and a standardization relationship expressed in equation (9) relates changes in rectangular population rates to changes in age-sex composition. The standardization relationship is shown to satisfy a number of desirable properties and produce a realistic two-sex model. The standardization approach is then applied to data from Sweden for 1973, and the results and their implications are discussed. In particular, it is seen that the total number of marriages in a two-sex population neither is nor should be bounded by the total numbers of marriages in the associated male and female one-sex nuptiality-mortality tables.
