Fewer men leads to more babies in poor areas: Study

PARIS (AFP) - Women who outnumber men in poor communities are likelier to have babies at a younger age as competition drives them to lower their expectations of the opposite sex, a study said on Wednesday.

The findings are a useful tool for understanding unwanted teen pregnancies, its authors believe.

Researchers at Britain's University of Portsmouth compared birth rates, gender ratios and the socio-economic background in more than 2,500 English wards, or urban neighbourhoods, each with about 8,000 residents.

In poor neighbourhoods where men were the minority, women had children earlier, the investigators found.