Want a baby girl? Move to Shetland

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Picture: submitted

If you're planning a pink pregnancy then Shetland is the place to be.

The remote Scottish islands are one of the few places in the UK where you’re more likely to give birth to a girl than a boy.

A study by journalistic.org found that most of Britain is true blue – the current gender trend is for boys rather than girls.

Data was collected by the ONS on the number of male and female births in each town and county.

The data was collected over a period of one year and took individual districts into consideration. Considering that thousands of births were recorded at each maternity unit, the gender gap was very tight indeed. In some instances, just one birth swayed certain districts into being a ‘pink’ town or a ‘blue’ town.

However, a few towns offered a greater divergence between the genders. Although the difference remains relatively small, the findings make for an interesting debate into whether a baby’s gender is solely determined by genetics, or whether other environmental and lifestyle factors can influence the pregnancy outcome.

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