ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Inclusive fitness and differential productivity across the life course determine intergenerational transfers in a small-scale human society.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Conflict, Constraint, Cooperation, and Allocation: A Plural Evolutionary Architecture for Human Reproductive Paradoxes.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- The Evolutionary Psychopathology of Human Pair-Bonding.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2026Article
- Not All Stress Is the Same: Variable Associations Between Psychosocial Stressors and Urinary Cortisol Rhythms in a Small-Scale Subsistence Society.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Women's mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Review
- Oxytocin varies across the life course in a sex-specific way in a human subsistence population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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- Indirect genetic effects among neighbors promote cooperation and accelerate adaptation in a small-scale human society.Science advances · 2025Article
- Human Reproductive Egalitarianism: A Catalyst for the Evolution of Personality Traits.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2025Article
- Perceived inequality and variability in the expression of parochial altruism.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Women's subsistence networks scaffold cultural transmission among BaYaka foragers in the Congo Basin.Science advances · 2024Article
- Cross-cousin marriage among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists during demographic transition and market integration.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Adolescence is characterized by more sedentary behaviour and less physical activity even among highly active forager-farmers.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Inheritance and inequality among nomads of South Siberia.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
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- Reproduction and production in a social context: Group size, reproductive skew and increasing returns.Ecology letters · 2023Article
- Female cooperation: evolutionary, cross-cultural and ethnographic evidence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Dynamics of cooperative networks associated with gender among South Indian Tamils.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Kin networks and opportunities for reproductive cooperation and conflict among hunter-gatherers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Shodagor women cooperate across domains of work and childcare to solve an adaptive problem.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Repercussions of patrilocal residence on mothers' social support networks among Tsimane forager-farmers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Transfers of resources between generations are an essential element in current models of human life-history evolution accounting for prolonged development, extended lifespan and menopause. Integrating these models with Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness, we predict that the interaction of biological kinship with the age-schedule of resource production should be a key driver of intergenerational transfers. In the empirical case of Tsimane' forager-horticulturalists in Bolivian Amazonia, we provide a detailed characterization of net transfers of food according to age, sex, kinship and the net need of donors and recipients. We show that parents, grandparents and siblings provide significant net downward transfers of food across generations. We demonstrate that the extent of provisioning responds facultatively to variation in the productivity and demographic composition of families, as predicted by the theory. We hypothesize that the motivation to provide these critical transfers is a fundamental force that binds together human nuclear and extended families. The ubiquity of three-generational families in human societies may thus be a direct reflection of fundamental evolutionary constraints on an organism's life-history and social organization.
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