Adopted daughters and adopted daughters-in-law in Taiwan: a mortality analysis.

ABSTRACT: Adoption is sometimes considered paradoxical from an evolutionary perspective because the costs spent supporting an adopted child would be better spent on rearing one's own. Kin selection theory is commonly used to solve this paradox, because the adoption of closely related kin contributes to the inclusive fitness of the adoptive parent. In this paper, we perform a novel test of kin selection theory in the context of adoption by asking whether adopted daughters-in-law, who contribute directly (i.e. genealogically) to the perpetuation of their adoptive families' lineages, experience lower mortality than daughters adopted for other purposes in historical Taiwan. We show that both classes of adopted daughter suffer lower mortality than biological daughters, but that the protective effect of a

SUBMITTER: Mattison SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5882702 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature