ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
The offspring quantity-quality trade-off and human fertility variation.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 93 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Religious parents receive more alloparental aid in rural Bangladesh.Evolutionary human sciences · 2026Article
- Female friendship and the cultural transmission of low-fertility values: Evidence from rural Poland.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- When parental care hurts: extended parental care and the evolution of overparenting.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Review
- Population decline: where demography, social science, and biology intersect.Reproduction (Cambridge, England) · 2024Review
- Isolating a culture of son preference among Armenian, Georgian and Azeri Parents in Soviet-era Russia.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- The impact of market integration on arranged marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
- Earlier sexual debut predicts higher (not lower) levels of father care measured across 12 weeks: an experience sampling study.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Life-history tradeoffs in a historical population (1896-1939) undergoing rapid fertility decline: Costs of reproduction?Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Evoked and transmitted culture models: Using bayesian methods to infer the evolution of cultural traits in history.PloS one · 2022Article
- Childcare support and child social development in Japan: investigating the mediating role of parental psychological condition and parenting style.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Cultural change beyond adoption dynamics: Evolutionary approaches to the discontinuation of contraception.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Review
- Disentangling wealth effects on fertility in 64 low- and middle-income countries.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Sharing the Load: How Do Coresident Children Influence the Allocation of Work and Schooling in Northwestern Tanzania?Demography · 2019Article
- Nicotinamide and Demographic and Disease transitions: Moderation is Best.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2019Review
- Nicotinamide's Ups and Downs: Consequences for Fertility, Development, Longevity and Diseases of Poverty and Affluence.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2018Article
- Material security, life history, and moralistic religions: A cross-cultural examination.PloS one · 2018Article
- Understanding variation in human fertility: what can we learn from evolutionary demography?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- Wealth, fertility and adaptive behaviour in industrial populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- The cultural evolution of fertility decline.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The idea that trade-offs between offspring quantity and quality shape reproductive behaviour has long been central to economic perspectives on fertility. It also has a parallel and richer theoretical foundation in evolutionary ecology. We review the application of the quantity-quality trade-off concept to human reproduction, emphasizing distinctions between clutch size and lifetime fertility, and the wider set of forces contributing to fertility variation in iteroparous and sexually reproducing species like our own. We then argue that in settings approximating human evolutionary history, several factors limit costly sibling competition. Consequently, while the optimization of quantity-quality trade-offs undoubtedly shaped the evolution of human physiology setting the upper limits of reproduction, we argue it plays a modest role in accounting for socio-ecological and individual variation in fertility. Only upon entering the demographic transition can fertility limitation be clearly interpreted as strategically orientated to advancing offspring quality via increased parental investment per child, with low fertility increasing descendant socio-economic success, although not reproductive success. We conclude that existing economic and evolutionary literature has often overemphasized the centrality of quantity-quality trade-offs to human fertility variation and advocate for the development of more holistic frameworks encompassing alternative life-history trade-offs and the evolved mechanisms guiding their resolution.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.