Cultural evolution of low fertility at high socioeconomic status

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Australia

Sara Loo

Sara Loo

The cultural evolution of fertility from high to low, in response to improvements in socioeconomic status, has been of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists. It seems intuitive to assume that greater wealth enables a large amount of wealth to be endowed to offspring, which would imply high fertility at high socioeconomic status. In many developed countries, however, the converse is true, with negative correlations being observed between socioeconomic status and fertility. Investigations into the mechanisms underlying this cultural evolution need to consider not only trade-offs between the quantity and quality of offspring, but also the effects of status-seeking and social learning on the fertility decisions of parents. We aim to build on previous work in the EEP Program by refining and analyzing a cultural-evolution model for understanding conditions under which low fertility emerges at high socioeconomic status. In particular, we will investigate three extensions through which (i) the disposable wealth of parents depends on their own socioeconomic status and on their parent generation’s endowment to offspring, (ii) parents base their fertility decisions on decisions of other parents with similar socioeconomic status, and (iii) role models for fertility decisions are chosen probabilistically across the whole range of socioeconomic status with a gradual preference for imitating parents with high socioeconomic status. We hope these extensions will provide a richer understanding of the mechanisms that drive the cultural evolution of low fertility at high socioeconomic status.



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Last edited: 01 August 2017

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