The Effects of Kin on Child Mortality in Rural Gambia

Sear, Rebecca; Steele, Fiona; McGregor, Ian A.; Mace, Ruth

doi:10.2307/3088363

Cited by 36 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In contrast to the analysis of child mortality (Sear et al, 2000(Sear et al, , 2002, the effects of the husband's mother were more important than those of the woman's mother. Somewhat unexpectedly, the husband's father also had a slight positive effect on female fertility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

“…Elder siblings are often assigned as nursemaids to younger children in West African societies (Thompson & Rahman, 1967;Whittemore & Beverly, 1989). We found that the presence of a woman's elder daughters increased the survival chances of her children (Sear et al, 2002) and their nutritional status (unpublished data). A recent study of a Moroccan Berber population has shown that probable helpers (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…We have already demonstrated that maternal, but not paternal, grandmothers were beneficial in that they improved the nutritional status and survival probabilities of children in this population (Sear et al, 2000(Sear et al, , 2002. We now intend to determine whether the presence of older female relatives also increased women's fertility rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia

Sear

Mace

McGregor

2003

Evolution and Human Behavior

Self Cite

118

126

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 46%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia

Sear

Mace

McGregor

2003

Evolution and Human Behavior

Self Cite

118

126

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Studies of contemporary populations usually use short-term and partial outcomes such as death during childhood e.g. 3 or the probability of giving birth within an observation period e.g. 4 rather than direct and detailed measurements of survival and reproduction over the whole life-course.…”

Section: Studying Reproductive Success In Humansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and biological determinants of reproductive success in Swedish males and females born 1915–1929

Goodman

Koupil

2009

Evolution and Human Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studying biological and social determinants of mortality and fertility provides insight into selective pressures in a population and the possibility of trade-offs between short-and long-term reproductive success. Limited data is available from post-demographic transition populations. We studied determinants of reproductive success using multi-generational data from a large, population-based cohort of 13 666 individuals born in Sweden between 1915 and 1929. We studied the effects of birthweight for gestational age, preterm birth, birth multiplicity, birth order, mother's age, mother's marital status and family socio-economic position upon reproductive success, measured as total number of children and grandchildren. We further tested the hypothesis that number of grandchildren would peak at intermediate family size, as predicted by some life history explanations for fertility limitation.Reproductive success was associated with both social and biological characteristics at birth. In both sexes, a higher birthweight for gestational age, a term birth and a younger mother were independently associated with a greater number of descendants. A married mother and higher family socio-economic position were also associated a greater number of descendants in males (but not females), while in females (but not males) higher birth order was associated with higher reproductive success. These effects were mediated by sex-specific effects upon the probability of marriage. Marriage was also affected by other early life characteristics including birthweight, indicating how 'biological' characteristics may operate via social pathways.Number of grandchildren increased with increasing number of children in both sexes, providing no evidence for a trade-off between quantity of offspring and their subsequent reproductive 'quality'.

show abstract

“…Because of the longitudinal nature of the dataset, a number of records from the same woman (either birth intervals or children) were included in each analysis. Multi-level models are able to control for this non-independence of data points, with the inclusion of a mother-level random effect (see Sear et al, 2003;Sear et al, 2002 for further details of this technique applied to this dataset).…”

Section: Length Of Birth Intervals and Child Mortalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Height, Marriage and Reproductive Success in Gambian Women

Sear¹,

Allal²,

Mace³

Socioeconomic Aspects of Human Behavioral Ecology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine the relationship between height and reproductive success (RS) in women from a natural fertility population in the Gambia. We observe the predicted trade-off between adult height and age at first birth: women who are tall in adulthood have later first births than short women do. However, tall women have reproductive advantages during the rest of their reproductive careers, primarily in the lower mortality rates of their children. This ultimately leads to higher fitness for taller women, despite their delayed start to reproduction. The higher RS of tall women appears to be entirely due to the physiological benefits of being tall. There is no evidence that female height is related to patterns of marriage or divorce in this population.

show abstract

The Effects of Kin on Child Mortality in Rural Gambia

Abstract: This is an electronic version of an Article published in Demography, 39 (1). pp. 43-63

Cited by 36 publications

References 26 publications

The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia

The effects of kin on female fertility in rural Gambia

Social and biological determinants of reproductive success in Swedish males and females born 1915–1929

Height, Marriage and Reproductive Success in Gambian Women

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About