Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth

Abstract

Persistent interest lies in gender inequality, especially with regard to the favouring of sons over daughters. Economists are concerned with how privilege is transmitted across generations, and anthropologists have long studied sex-biased inheritance norms. There has, however, been no focused cross-cultural investigation of how parent–offspring correlations in wealth vary by offspring sex. We estimate these correlations for 38 wealth measures, including somatic and relational wealth, from 15 populations ranging from hunter–gatherers to small-scale farmers. Although small sample sizes limit our statistical power, we find no evidence of ubiquitous male bias, at least as inferred from comparing parent–son and parent–daughter correlations. Rather we find wide variation in signatures of sex bias, with evidence of both son and daughter-biased transmission. Further, we introduce a model that helps pinpoint the conditions under which simple mid-point parent–offspring wealth correlations can reveal information about sex-biased parental investment. Our findings are relevant to the study of female-biased kinship by revealing just how little normative descriptors of kinship systems, such as patrilineal inheritance, capture intergenerational correlations in wealth, and how variable parent–son and parent–daughter correlations can be. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals'.

The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies

“…Finally, embodied wealth refers to attributes of individuals, such as size, strength, or knowledge. This framework has been applied to a dataset of diverse human societies to reveal how the relevance of different aspects of wealth vary across societies, how some aspects of wealth are more readily transmissible across generations than others, and influences on the severity of inequality across societies [6][7][8].…”

The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals

“…Many of the included papers show that, in humans, individuals are extraordinarily facultative, turning for help to individuals related through females, individuals related through males, reproductive partners or others, irrespective of the norms associated with post-marital residence, descent group membership, intergenerational wealth transmission and so on. Indeed, Borgerhoff Mulder et al [17] show that despite the prominence of male-biased kinship institutions, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocality, careful investigations of parent -son and parent-daughter similarities across 15 societies show no clear evidence of son preference. Several papers in this issue focused on human case studies similarly point to 'emergent' FBK within male-biased kinship systems [14,16,21], reinforcing (i) that typologies of kinship often overlook and underemphasize the contributions that females make to their families and social partners and (ii) that FBK is probably more important than often conceived in structuring the content and outcomes of mammalian-and especially human-social interactions.…”

“…Matrifocal kinship (see glossary) also structures male social relationships: in Dominica-another nominally male-biased kinship system-matrifocality results in trade-offs between men's investments in conjugal relationships versus male-male support relationships [21]. Borgerhoff Mulder et al [17] find that silver spoon effects are just as likely for daughters as they are for sons, despite the common belief that sons are generally favoured over daughters in so many parts of the world (see also [40]). Finally, Ly et al [41] find support in genetic data for a hypothesis that posits increased endogamy as one means by which the matrilineal puzzle might be solved-by keeping men in close proximity to both their natal and spousal kin.…”

“…As highlighted below, these articles describe hypotheses that are novel to, yet could be fruitfully tested in, humans. We also include articles drawing on individuallevel variables to examine the proximate determinants [14 -16] and consequences [17] of prioritizing different kin as targets of cooperation or investment. This type of evidence reveals the micro-level influences on individual behaviour that may be obscured by group-level classifications of behaviour as male-or female-biased [18].…”

Contributions of evolutionary anthropology to understanding climate‐induced human migration

“…Moreover, one of the hallmarks of an HBE approach is the analysis of alternative behavioral strategies, such as the decision to migrate. Although migration studies are not numerous in HBE, migration is often just under the surface of many research questions, such as how normative marital residence patterns connect to social structure and economic equality (see Borgerhoff Mulder et al, 2019;Reynolds et al, 2020), or how temporary labor migration impacts fertility (Shenk et al, 2016). Those HBE studies that have examined migration directly have focused primarily on individual migration behavior in agricultural contexts with a lens on inheritance and marriage opportunities (Clarke & Low, 1992;Strassmann & Clarke, 1998;Towner, 2002;Voland & Dunbar, 1995).…”