Evolutionary demography of age at last birth: integrating approaches from human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution.

ABSTRACT: Cultural evolutionary theory and human behavioural ecology offer different, but compatible approaches to understanding human demographic behaviour. For much of their 30 history, these approaches have been deployed in parallel, with few explicit attempts to integrate them empirically. In this paper, we test hypotheses drawn from both approaches to explore how reproductive behaviour responds to cultural changes among Mosuo agriculturalists of China. Specifically, we focus on how age at last birth (ALB) varies in association with temporal shifts in fertility policies, spatial variation and kinship ecologies. We interpret temporal declines in ALB as plausibly consistent with demographic front-loading of reproduction in light of fertility constraints and later ages at last birth in matrilineal

SUBMITTER: Mattison S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5812972 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature