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German media has reported that a village in Poland has had only girls born for the last decade:

The head of the parish promises a reward, the Catholic village priest asks for God's help: In the Polish village of 300 souls, Mistitz, no boys have been born for almost ten years.

Source: "Mistitz in Polen – Dorf ohne Jungen", tagesschau Stand: 17.08.2019 11:43

How is that possible that there are no boys born? Statistically, it seems to me to be nearly impossible. Is this real, or is it a publicity gag or something else?

English media has also reported on the village: "Girls only: Tiny Polish village of 300 people waits for first birth of a boy for nearly a DECADE", Daily Mail

Support for the claim appears to rest on explicit birth records, although interviews with families in the village were also conducted. The New York Post writes (emphasis mine)

According to birth records, there hasn’t been a boy born there since 2009, though 12 girls have come into the world in that time frame.

I did some digging and was unable to access said records (not wholly surprising, I suppose), or more details on them. It appears that media conducted interviews with families in the area to back this up; the Post's phrasing is ambiguous, but it indicates that boys in general are less common in the town:

Most family interviewed by the press reported having daughters, often more than one.

The Associated Press cites Krystyna Zydziak, the "community head", as saying that ten girls have been born since 2010; the media also talked with various village and local officials, including the county mayor.

Now, the crux of my answer - aside from indicating the likely veracity of the claim - is that none of this should be overly surprising. The village is small (current population 272, according to the New York Times), and therefore there have only been a small number of births in the last decade (12, according to the Post and other media, e.g. Today and Fox News).

If the chance of a baby being a boy and the chance of a baby being a girl are equal, then the odds of 12 consecutive births all yielding girls is (1/2)¹² = 0.0244%. That's small, but when you consider that there are many towns and villages in the world, it shouldn't be surprising that at some point, just from randomness, 12 girls are born in a row in a given town. The odds of the same thing happening with 12 boys (which would also be widely reported) are identical, so the odds of 12 consecutive babies having the same sex is 0.0488%. (The Daily Mail notes that in 2017, 207,000 boys were born in Poland, as were 196,000 girls, making the odds slightly lower.)

Of course, more than randomness could be at play; environmental or cultural factors could be responsible. It's possible that maternal diet pre-conception (not post-conception, of course) can play a role. Several studies have claimed that the sex of a child can slightly be influenced by dietary factors:

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  Breakfast cereals, salt and potassium may increase the chances of having a boy (Mathews 2008))


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  A maternal high-fat diet may lead to more male offspring in mice (Mao et al. 2010)

That said, these results are contentious and not well-supported. I mention them only because the Daily Mail article you mentioned wrote that scientists "have offered to conduct research to investigate the unique situation", and perhaps any environmental factors will be turned up if that research happens.

Generally if such statistics would exist, they would be available to every Polish citizen per freedom of information act. Alas, there's no such statistics in Poland. While the claim might be true, citing birth records is a fake source. I know well which sources are available and who can get it, because I'm citizen of Poland who worked for years as a reporter who processed statistical data about Polish cities and villages and who works often with freedom of information requests. In fact I have friends who tried to get exact statistics (i.e. sex) for Poland and it's impossible (i.e. there's no current statistics and they are for bigger administrative divisions).

The more detailed answer:

1. I couldn't find reliable information about parish or priest offering a reward. The head of the gmina (higher administrative division, just above the village or, to be precise - above sołectwo) - Rajmund Frischko - promises the reward. Also he asked experts (mainly in the genetics field) for help, not God. Some experts already promised to investigate this case[1], but it won't help much, because...




2. The statistics aren't clear - in Poland de facto the official home address doesn't have to be the same as real; there's law forbidding such case, but it's a dead law - at least for now. Birth records are administrative thing, they don't show reality - especially with that dead law where so many people live in different place than it shows up in registers/in the id card. But even if somehow real address would always fit the official one then...



3. There's no official statistics for the claims of the press. Sex statistics are given only for a higher administrative division (i.e. gmina Cisek) and the last published statistics is from 2014 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Piramida_wieku_Gmina_Cisek.png - the blue bars are women, black are men. That's the only reliable data so far.


4. As it's not a job of sołtys (head of the village) or wójt (head of the gmina) to process such statistics, so they also don't have a way to be sure except rumors.


5. Even the population of the village given in the Internet is a rumor. The last statistics are from 2007 (328 people). There weren't any publications about that village in 2016, so press made that up.[3]

Sources and notes:

[1] https://wiadomosci.wp.pl/plec-dziecka-we-wsi-miejsce-odrzanskie-rodza-sie-same-dziewczynki-chlopiec-byl-ale-9-lat-temu-6404238660814465a

[2] https://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/ludnosc/ludnosc/ludnosc-w-gminach-wedlug-stanu-w-dniu-31-12-2011-r-bilans-opracowany-w-oparciu-o-wyniki-nsp-2011,2,1.html

[3] there are a lot of databases which probably use some statistical methods or user input - they are mostly incorrect - either coordinates, population etc. It feels like "we don't have data, but we want it, so let's put something random here". The only reliable data is on https://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/ludnosc/ludnosc/