Are the reproductive benefits that accrue to wealthy sons greater than the benefits that accrue to wealthy daughters?

A very interesting hypothesis.

“parents were more motivated to pass wealth to sons because the reproductive benefits that accrue to wealthy sons are greater than the benefits that accrue to wealthy daughters. Partially because of these sex differences, gender inequality spread”https://t.co/IBjiqPJT7N pic.twitter.com/Sz7AzMzynL

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) December 26, 2019

I had never considered this aspect before.

I have long observed that biologically men are the disposable sex.  A community of 20,000 which looses 99% of its men, can biologically restore itself within a generation (10,000 women and 100 men) whereas a community which loses 99% of its women will collapse (10,000 men and 100 women).  

This evolutionary disposability of men shows up in all sorts of ways in terms of propensity towards risk taking, mortality rates, self-sacrifice rates, deaths by accident, etc.  

From this, it has also long puzzled me to just how blind modern feminism (as an ideology) has been to the inherent advantage of being the necessary sex.  I.e. there is a premium, at a biological level, on women which is absent for men.  Of course, there are personal burdens that come with that, but women have more and better choices than men.  Why demand to be treated like the disposable sex?

Regardless, though, I am intrigued by this insight from William von Hippel in The Social Lea.  If I am a parent, simply from an economic view, it follows that my limited accumulated capital is best invested in my sons because they will more likely have more children (my grandchildren) than my daughters.

Particularly a couple of hundred years ago, in the early settlement of the frontier, and given the relatively higher rate of death in childbirth if I had 20 children, 10 daughters and 10 sons, it would make logical sense that I should invest more in my sons than in my daughters, since sons can continue remarrying younger wives and have more children to support me whereas daughters cannot.

It is a logically seductive idea, but is it true?  I am not so sure.  In my genealogical work, I see daughters and sons both remarrying once and twice again after an initial spousal death.  And while women in those days had a shorter life span than men (in contrast to today) owing to death in childbirth, I wonder whether they did indeed leave fewer children to support their grandparents.

I'll have to read the book to see how well grounded the apparently plausible theory is but I am marginally skeptical.