Study: Alaska PF Pays Dividend of Twin Boys

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Created on Wednesday, 19 February 2025 14:38

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By YERETH ROSEN

Alaska Beacon

The Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, an annual payout to residents from the state’s oil-wealth fund, has been credited with numerous positive outcomes in the state. It has, according to past analysis, reduced the state’s poverty rate, reduced income inequality, boosted the birth rate and improved children’s health and reduced child obesity, among other benefits, according to scientists.

Now there is one more positive impact credited to the dividend: more births of twin boys.

A study by researchers from Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin and New York University concluded that births of 50 twin baby boys in Alaska through 2019 can be attributed to the annual dividend payout that started in 1982.

While prior studies have shown that births of twin boys decline at times of economic stress, the new study, published in the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics, says it is the first to study the effect of the reverse situation on births of boy twins.

The analysis used records of 437,246 births from 1980 to 2019, of which 1.3% were baby boys who were twins. Dividend payments over that period averaged $1,634, with most payouts made in October, the study said.

By the scientists’ calculations, every $1,000 increment in the dividend up to 2019 increased the odds of a live birth of a male twin within three months of the payout by 0.2%. That increase in rate corresponded to the 50 twin baby boys who would otherwise not have been born, according to the analysis.

Exactly how this happens is not clear, but evolutionary science shows that times of economic stress diminishes the likelihood of male twin births, said lead author Parvati Singh, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Ohio State’s College of Public Health.

Those stresses are physically detrimental to male twins, she said. “Pregnancy complications may be a part of the reason we see a decline in male twin live births during stressful periods. It could also be directly related to spontaneous miscarriages of male twin pregnancies as a maternal response to external stressors,” she said by email.

The dividend, in contrast, seems to benefit twin boys physically, she said.

“We don’t know exactly what the step-by-step mechanism is, but overall, it may increase maternal optimism,” she said by email. 

And that, in turn, may non-consciously translate into an innate “biological decision to conserve a male twin pregnancy,” she said.

Evolutionary science shows that fewer twin boys are born during times of economic stress or other stresses, but the same is not true for twin girls, she said.

“Male pregnancies impose higher costs on maternal resources relative to females. Reproductive success of males (and male twins in particular) also diminishes rapidly during stressful ambient periods,” like times of war, famine or pandemic, she said. “Female reproductive success, on the other hand, remains relatively stable,” she said.

The Alaska Permanent Fund was worth a little over $82.6 billion as of Monday. Last year’s dividend was $1,702.

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