Wealth, fertility and adaptive behaviour in industrial populations.

ABSTRACT: The lack of association between wealth and fertility in contemporary industrialized populations has often been used to question the value of an evolutionary perspective on human behaviour. Here, we first present the history of this debate, and the evolutionary explanations for why wealth and fertility (the number of children) are decoupled in modern industrial settings. We suggest that the nature of the relationship between wealth and fertility remains an open question because of the multi-faceted nature of wealth, and because existing cross-sectional studies are ambiguous with respect to how material wealth and fertility are linked. A literature review of longitudinal studies on wealth and fertility shows that the majority of these report positive effects of wealth, although levels of fer

SUBMITTER: Stulp G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4822433 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature