Women's subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters.

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Page, Abigail E, Ringen, Erik J, Koster, Jeremy, Borgerhoff Mulder, Monique, Kramer, Karen, Shenk, Mary K, Stieglitz, Jonathan, Starkweather, Kathrine, Ziker, John P, Boyette, Adam H et al (show 33 more authors) , Colleran, Heidi, Moya, Cristina, Du, Juan, Mattison, Siobhán M, Greaves, Russell, Sum, Chun-Yi, Liu, Ruizhe, Lew-Levy, Sheina, Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Francy, Prall, Sean, Towner, Mary C, Blumenfield, Tami, Migliano, Andrea B, Major-Smith, Daniel, Dyble, Mark, Salali, Gul Deniz, Chaudhary, Nikhil, Derkx, Inez E, Ross, Cody T, Scelza, Brooke A, Gurven, Michael D, Winterhalder, Bruce P, Cortez, Carmen, Pacheco-Cobos, Luis, Schacht, Ryan, Macfarlan, Shane J, Leonetti, Donna, French, Jennifer C ORCID: 0000-0001-5947-6669, Alam, Nurul, Zohora, Fatema Tuz, Kaplan, Hillard S, Hooper, Paul L and Sear, Rebecca (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, 121 (9). e2318181121-e2318181121.

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Population Dynamics, Fertility, Economics, Developing Countries, Socioeconomic Factors, Female
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Histories, Languages and Cultures
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	26 Mar 2024 09:25
Last Modified:	26 Mar 2024 15:35
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.2318181121
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2318181121
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3179904