Page, Abigail E;
Ringen, Erik J;
Koster, Jeremy;
Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique;
Kramer, Karen;
Shenk, Mary K;
Stieglitz, Jonathan;
... Sear, Rebecca; + view all
(2024)
Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
, 121
(9)
, Article e2318181121. 10.1073/pnas.2318181121.
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Abstract
While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities-incorporating market integration-are associated with fertility in 10,250 women from 27 small-scale societies and found considerable variation in fertility. This variation did not align with group-level subsistence typologies. Societies labeled as "farmers" did not have higher fertility than others, while "foragers" did not have lower fertility. However, at the individual level, we found strong evidence that fertility was positively associated with farming and moderate evidence of a negative relationship between foraging and fertility. Markers of market integration were strongly negatively correlated with fertility. Despite strong cross-cultural evidence, these relationships were not consistent in all populations, highlighting the importance of the socioecological context, which likely influences the diverse mechanisms driving the relationship between fertility and subsistence.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2318181121 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2318181121 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Anthropological demography, cross-cultural analysis, demographic transition, fertility, subsistence-based populations, Female, Humans, Fertility, Population Dynamics, Socioeconomic Factors, Economics, Developing Countries |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10187584 |
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