[css] Can I set the height of a div based on a percentage-based width?

<div><p>some unnecessary content</p></div>

div{
    border: 1px solid red;
    width: 40%;
    padding: 40%;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    position: relative;
}
p{
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
}

For this to work i think you need to define the padding to ex. top? like this:

<div><p>some unnecessary content</p></div>

div{
    border: 1px solid red;
    width: 40%;
    padding-top: 40%;
    box-sizing: border-box;
    position: relative;
}
p{
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 0;
}

anyways, thats how i got it to work, since with just padding all arround it would not be a square.