Changes in Maternal and Child Mortality Rates in Three Isolated Gambian Villages Over Ten Years

Lamb, William H.; Foord, Frances A.; Lamb, C. M. B.; Whitehead, R. G.

doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(84)90664-0

Cited by 78 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…As part of their research station, the DNU set up a permanent medical clinic providing free contraception and medical care. This very rapidly reduced mortality rates in this population and also resulted in a decline in fertility, though fertility was much slower to change than mortality (Lamb et al 1984;6 Sear 2001;Weaver and Beckerleg 1993). We have restricted most of our analyses to the period between 1950 and 1974, when this was a natural fertility, natural mortality population.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Height and reproductive success

Sear

2006

Hum Nat

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Publisher's copyright statement:The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. ABSTRACTIn Western societies, height is positively correlated with reproductive success (RS) for men but negatively correlated with RS for women. These relationships have been attributed to sexual selection: women prefer tall men, and men prefer short women. It is this success in the marriage market which leads to higher RS for tall men and short women. We have already shown that the relationship between height and RS for women is quite different in a non-Western context. In a subsistence farming community in rural Gambia, height is positively correlated with reproductive success for women, largely due to the higher survival of the children of tall women. Here, the relationship between height and reproductive success is analysed for men in the same community. For these Gambian men, there is no significant relationship between height and the number of children they produce, although tall men do contract more marriages than shorter men. We conclude that environmental context needs to be taken into account when analysing human reproductive behaviour. Height and reproductive successRebecca Sear

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Height and reproductive success

Sear

2006

Hum Nat

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“…During 1974 the MRC Dunn Nutrition Unit (DNU) established a permanent medical clinic in one of the study villages. The availability of modern medicine caused a sudden drop in mortality, and a slower decline in fertility (Lamb et al, 1984;Weaver & Beckerleg, 1993). Between 1950 and1974, this population had no access to contraception and little medical care.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia

Sear

Mace

McGregor

2003

Evolution and Human Behavior

118

126

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This is an electronic version of an Article published in Evolution and AbstractHuman females reproduce relatively rapidly throughout their reproductive years compared to the other great apes. It has been suggested that women are able to sustain this rapid pace by co-opting family members to help raise their children. We tested the hypothesis that the presence of kin will increase the reproductive rates of women using a longitudinal database collected from rural Gambia. We found that both the husband's mother and, to a lesser extent, the husband's father increased the probability that a woman would give birth. A woman's parents, however, had no effect on her fertility rate, nor did her elder sisters or co-wives. The presence of a woman's elder brothers even decreased her probability of giving birth. There was no evidence that elder children acted as 'helpers at the nest', as the existence of living elder children slowed down rather than increased birth rates. We suggest that the increased fertility in the presence of mothers-in-law may be due to these women helping out their daughters-in-law with domestic and subsistence duties. Given that it is paternal, rather than maternal, relatives who increase fertility, social pressures on women from older kin to bear many children may also be important.

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“…This clinic has considerably altered the demography of the survey villages by dramatically reducing mortality and making contraception available (Lamb et al 1984;Weaver and Beckerleg 1993). We confined our analysis to the period when the villages were representative of natural fertility and mortality Gambian farming communities.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%