ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Status competition, inequality, and fertility: implications for the demographic transition.
Article 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 27 papers.
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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
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Gendered Mediation Effects of Social Support on Fertility Intentions Among Childless Adults of Reproductive Age in China: National Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- The Shuar Health and Life History Project: Overview at 20 Years and Introduction to the Special Issue.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Young people on social media in a globalized world: self-optimization in highly competitive and achievement-oriented forms of life.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- From the Ground Up: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Past Fertility and Population Narratives.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Adoption, Fostering, and Parental Absence in Vanuatu.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Gender disparities in material and educational resources differ by kinship system.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Linkages between men's wealth status and the ideal number of children: A trend and multilevel analysis of survey data in Nigeria.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- The impact of market integration on arranged marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh.Evolutionary human sciences · 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
- Contributions of evolutionary anthropology to understanding climate-induced human migration.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2021Review
- Article
- The Development of Market-Driven Identities in Young People: A Socio-Ecological Evolutionary Approach.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Populated Places and Conspicuous Consumption: High Population Density Cues Predict Consumers' Luxury-Linked Brand Attitudes.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Fertility intentions and outcomes in Indonesia: Evolutionary perspectives on sexual conflict.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Breastfeeding Duration and the Social Learning of Infant Feeding Knowledge in Two Maya Communities.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Disentangling wealth effects on fertility in 64 low- and middle-income countries.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Maternal effects on offspring growth indicate post-weaning juvenile dependence in chimpanzees (Frontiers in zoology · 2020Article
- Evolutionary Mismatch in Mating.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The role that social status plays in small-scale societies suggests that status may be important for understanding the evolution of human fertility decisions, and for understanding how such decisions play out in modern contexts. This paper explores whether modelling competition for status--in the sense of relative rank within a society--can help shed light on fertility decline and the demographic transition. We develop a model of how levels of inequality and status competition affect optimal investment by parents in the embodied capital (health, strength, and skills) and social status of offspring, focusing on feedbacks between individual decisions and socio-ecological conditions. We find that conditions similar to those in demographic transition societies yield increased investment in both embodied capital and social status, generating substantial decreases in fertility, particularly under conditions of high inequality and intense status competition. We suggest that a complete explanation for both fertility variation in small-scale societies and modern fertility decline will take into account the effects of status competition and inequality.
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