Does wealth increase parental investment biases in child education? Evidence from two African populations on the cusp of the fertility transition

Current Anthropology

Volumn 51, Issue 5, 2010, Pages 693-701

  Gibson, Mhairi A ^a   Sear, Rebecca ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

^b LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77958132854     PISSN: 00113204     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/655954     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. Becker, Gary S. 1991. A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
2. Beise, Jan, and Eckart Voland. 2008. Intrafamilial resource competition and mate competition shaped social-group-specific natal dispersal in the 18th and 19th century Krummhörn population. American Journal of Human Biology 20(3):325-336
3. Bjerkedal, Tor, Petter Kristensen, Geir A. Skjeret, and John I. Brevik. 2007. Intelligence test scores and birth order among young Norwegian men (conscripts) analyzed within and between families. Intelligence 35(5):503-514.
4. Black, Sandra E., Paul J. Devereux, and Kjell G. Salvanes. 2005. The more the merrier? the effect of family size and birth order on children's education. Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(2):669-700.
5. Blake, Judith. 1989. Family size and achievement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6. Boomsma, Doorret I., Toos C. E. M. van Beijsterveld, A. Leo Beem, Rosa A. Hoekstra, Tinca J. C. Polderman, and Meike Bartels. 2008. Intelligence and birth order in boys and girls. Intelligence 36(6): 630-634.
7. Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique. 1998. Brothers and sisters: how sibling interactions affect optimal parental allocations. Human Nature 9(2):119-161.
8. Bulatao, Rodolfo A., and John B. Casterline, eds. 2001. Global fertility transition. Population and Development Review 27(suppl.). New York: Population Council.
9. Butcher, Kristin F., and Anne Case. 1994. The effect of sibling sex composition on women's education and earnings. Quarterly Journal of Economics 109(3):531-563.
10. Caldwell, John C. 1976. Toward a restatement of demographic transition theory. Population and Development Review 2(3/4):321-366.
11. Caldwell, John C., Bruce K. Caldwell, Pat Caldwell, Peter F. MacDonald, and Thomas Schindlmayr. 2006. Demographic transition theory. Dordrecht: Springer.
12. Clark, Gregory, and Neil Cummins. 2009. Urbanization, mortality, and fertility in Malthusian England. American Economic Review 99(2):242-247.
13. Clegg, E. John, and I. Guy Pawson. 1978. Influence of family characteristics on heights, weights and skinfolds of highland and lowland children in Ethiopia. Annals of Human Biology 5(2):139-146.
14. Clutton-Brock, Timothy H. 1984. Reproductive effort and terminal investment in iteroparous animals. American Naturalist 123(1): 212-229.
15. Draper, Patricia, and Raymond Hames. 2000. Birth order, sibling investment, and fertility among Ju/'hoansi (!Kung).Human Nature 11(2):117-156.
16. Eloundou-Enyegue, Parfait M., and Lindy B. Williams. 2006. Family size and schooling in sub-Saharan settings: a re-examination. Demography 43(1):25-52.
17. Faurie, Charlotte, Andrew F. Russell, and Virpi Lummaa. 2009. Mid-dleborns disadvantaged? testing birth-order effects on fitness in pre-Industrial Finns. PLoS ONE 4(5):e5680.
18. Ghosh, Jyoti R., and Arup R. Bandyopadhyay. 2006. Income, birth order, siblings, and anthropometry. Human Biology 78(6):733-741.
19. Gibson, Mhairi A. 2008. Does investment in the sexes differ when fathers are absent? sex-biased infant survival and child growth in rural Ethiopia. Human Nature 19(3):263-276.
20. Gibson, Mhairi A., and David W. Lawson. Forthcoming. " Modernization" increases parental investment and sibling resource competition: evidence from a rural development initiative in Ethiopia. Evolution and Human Behavior.
21. Gibson, Mhairi A., and Ruth Mace. 2003. Strong mothers bear more sons in rural Ethiopia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 270(suppl. 1):S108-S109
22. -. 2006. An energy-saving development initiative increases birth rate and childhood malnutrition in rural Ethiopia. PLoS Med 3(4):e87.
23. -. 2007. Polygyny, reproductive success and child health in rural Ethiopia: why marry a married man? Journal of Biosocial Science 39(2):287-300.
24. Hertwig, Ralph, Jennifer N. Davis, and Frank J. Sulloway. 2002. Parental investment: how an equity motive can produce inequality. Psychological Bulletin 128(5):728-745.
25. Holden, Clare Janaki, and Ruth Mace. 2003. Spread of cattle led to the loss of matrilineal descent in Africa: a coevolutionary analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 270(1532): 2425-2433.
26. Holden, Clare Janaki, Rebecca Sear, and Ruth Mace. 2003. Matriliny as daughter-biased investment. Evolution and Human Behavior 24(2):99-112.
27. Jeon, Joonghwan. 2008. Evolution of parental favoritism among different-aged offspring. Behavioral Ecology 19(2):344-352.
28. Kaplan, Hillard. 1996. A theory of fertility and parental investment in traditional and modern human societies. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 39:91-135.
29. Kaplan, Hillard, Jane B. Lancaster, W. Troy Tucker, and Kermyt G. Anderson. 2002. Evolutionary approach to below replacement fertility. American Journal of Human Biology 14(2):233-256.
30. Kramer, Karen L. 2005. Maya children: helpers at the farm. London: Harvard University Press.
31. Lawson, David W., and Ruth Mace. 2008. Sibling configuration and childhood growth in contemporary British families. International Journal of Epidemiology 37(6):1408-1421
32. -. 2010. Optimizing modern family size: trade-offs between fertility and the economic costs of reproduction. Human Nature 21(1):39-61.
33. Lee, Ronald D., and Karen L. Kramer. 2002. Children's economic roles in the Maya family life cycle: Cain, Caldwell, and Chayanov revisited. Population and Development Review 28(2):475-499.
34. Liddell, Christine, Louise Barrett, and Peter Henzi. 2003. Parental investment in schooling: evidence from a subsistence farming community in South Africa. International Journal of Psychology 38(1): 54-63.
35. Low, Bobbi S. 1991. Reproductive life in nineteenth century Sweden: an evolutionary perspective on demographic phenomena. Ethology and Sociobiology 12(6):411-448.
36. Mace, Ruth 1996. Biased parental investment and reproductive success in Gabbra pastoralists. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 38(2):75-81.
37. -. 1998. The co-evolution of human fertility and wealth inheritance strategies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 353 (1367) 389-397.
38. -. 2007. The evolutionary ecology of human family size. In The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology. Robin Dunbar and Louise Barrett, eds. Pp. 383-396. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
39. Magadi, Monica, Nyovani Madise, and Ian Diamond. 2001. Factors associated with unfavourable birth outcomes in Kenya. Journal of Biosocial Science 33(2):199-225.
40. McNamara, John M., and Alasdair I. Houston. 2006. State and value: a perspective from behavioral ecology. In Social information transmission and human biology. Jonathan C. K. Wells, Simon Strickland, and Kevin Laland, eds. Pp. 59-88. Boca Raton, FL: CRC.
41. Modin, Bitte. 2002. Birth order and mortality: a life-long follow-up of 14,200 boys and girls born in early 20th century Sweden. Social Science & Medicine 54(7):1051-1064.
42. Nielsen, Henriette S., Laust Mortensen, Ulrikka Nygaard, Ole Schnor, Ole B. Christiansen, and Anne-Marie N. Andersen. 2008. Brothers and reduction of the birth weight of later-born siblings. American Journal of Epidemiology 167(4):480-484.
43. Quinlan, Robert J., and Mark V. Flinn. 2005. Kinship, sex, and fitness in a Caribbean community. Human Nature 16(1):32-57.
44. Rickard, Ian J. 2008. Offspring are lighter at birth and smaller in adulthood when born after a brother versus a sister in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior 29(3):196-200.
45. Rickard, Ian J., Andrew F. Russell, and Virpi Lummaa. 2007. Producing sons reduces lifetime reproductive success of subsequent offspring in pre-industrial Finns. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274(1628):2981-2988.
46. Salmon, Catherine A., and Martin Daly. 1998. Birth order and familial sentiment: middleborns are different. Evolution and Human Behavior 19(5):299-312.
47. Sear, Rebecca. 2008. Kin and child survival in rural Malawi: are matrilineal kin always beneficial in a matrilineal society? Human Nature 19(3):277-293.
48. Sear, Rebecca, Ruth Mace, and Ian A. McGregor. 2003. The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia. Evolution and Human Behavior 24(1):25-42.
49. Sear, Rebecca, Fiona Steele, Ian A. McGregor, and Ruth Mace. 2002. The effects of kin on child mortality in rural Gambia. Demography 39(1):43-63.
50. Steelman, Lala Carr, Brian Powell, Regina Werum, and Scott Carter. 2002. Reconsidering the effects of sibling configuration: recent advances and challenges. Annual Review of Sociology 28:243-269.
51. Sulloway, Frank J. 1998. Born to rebel: birth order, family dynamics and creative lives. 2nd edition. London: Abacus.
52. Voland, Eckart, and Robin I. M. Dunbar. 1995. Resource competition and reproduction: the relationship between economic and parental strategies in the Krummhörn population (1720-1874). Human Nature 6(1):33-49.
53. Woods, Robert. 1984. Social class variations in the decline of marital fertility in late nineteenth-century London. Geografiska Annaler Series B, Human Geography 66(1):29-38.