Netting in Nepal: Social Change,the Life Course,and Brideservice in Sangila

The links among family characteristics, pre-marital experiences organized outside the family, and participation in choice of spouse are now well established for historical transformations in a range of social settings. Less examined are the consequences of these changes for subsequent inter-familial relationships in societies where marriage organizes kin alliances and interfamilial labor obligations. Using survey and ethnographic data gathered in Nepal, this paper examines the implications of change in work, living experiences, and the marriage process for subsequent inter-familial relationships exemplified by crosscousin marriage and the provision of brideservice. Hypotheses are developed which consider the impact of community context on these behaviors; these are tested in logistic regression analyses for the first marriages of all 430 ever-married women in the community. Cross-cousin marriage and brideservice are shown to be related to prior familial characteristics, life-course experience, and elements of the marriage process in ways that are significantly conditioned by community history and proximity to urban centers.     

Hypothetical rankings of prospective husbands for female kin in lowland Nicaragua: consensus analysis indicates high agreement and associations with wealth and hunting skill

In preindustrial societies, kin may exert influence on the mating choices of women, but there have been few systematic studies of the preferred characteristics of husbands for female kin. In an indigenous Mayangna and Miskito community, photographs of 29 male household heads were presented to informants, who ranked the men on three characteristics: desirability as a spouse, hunting ability and wealth. For the desirability rankings, informants were asked to consider the advice that they would give to young female relatives and rank the men based on the qualities that such women should seek in a husband. Consensus analysis indicates that there is high agreement among informants on all three sets of rankings. There is no evidence that the age and sex of informants are associated with variation in evaluations of the desirability of men, which suggests that the evaluations by reproductively active women do not significantly differ from rankings by other informants. Multivariate analysis indicates that perceptions of both a man's wealth and his hunting ability are positively associated with his desirability as a prospective husband for female kin. By contrast, a strong kin-based social network, as measured by the presence of consanguineal kin in the community, seems unimportant to a man's desirability as a husband. Although it remains unclear to what extent hunting ability is a signal of phenotypic quality, these results support predictions that individuals will encourage female kin to marry men who are good resource providers. Finally, compared to a conventional reliability analysis, consensus analysis is demonstrated as a superior method for assessing both unidimensionality and subgroup variation in informant rankings.     

Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies

Social norms that regulate reproductive and marital decisions generate impressive cross-cultural variation in the prevalence of kin marriages. In some societies, marriages among kin are the norm and this inbreeding creates intensive kinship networks concentrated within communities. In others, especially forager societies, most marriages are between more genealogically and geographically distant individuals, which generates a larger number of kin and affines of lesser relatedness in more extensive kinship networks spread out over multiple communities. Here, we investigate the fitness consequence of kin marriages across a sample of 46 small-scale societies (12 439 marriages). Results show that some non-forager societies (including horticulturalists, agriculturalists and pastoralists), but not foragers, have intensive kinship societies where fitness outcomes (measured as the number of surviving children in genealogies) peak at commonly high levels of spousal relatedness. By contrast, the extensive kinship systems of foragers have worse fitness outcomes at high levels of spousal relatedness. Overall, societies with greater levels of inbreeding showed a more positive relationship between fitness and spousal relatedness.     

Hamilton's rule and kin competition: the Kipsigis case

Evolutionary studies of human behavior have emphasized the importance of kin selection in explaining social institutions and fitness outcomes. Our relatives can nevertheless be competitors as well as sources of altruism. This is particularly likely when there is local competition over resources, where conflict can lead to strife among nondispersing relatives, reducing or even negating the effects of relatedness on promoting altruism. Here, I present demographic data on a land-limited human population, utilizing large within-population variation in land ownership to determine the interactions between local resource competition and the benefits of kin in enhancing child survival, a key component of fitness in this population. As predicted, wealth affects the extent of kin altruism, in that paternal relatives (specifically father's brothers) appear to buffer young children from mortality much more effectively in rich than in poor households. This interaction effect is interpreted as evidence that the extent of nepotism among humans depends critically on resource availability. Further unanticipated evidence that maternal kin play a role in buffering children from mortality in situations where paternal kin control few resources speaks to the important role that specific local circumstance plays in shaping kin contributions to child welfare.     

Effect of education and household characteristics on infant and child mortality in urban Nepal

Infant and child mortality differentials are analysed by education of parents and other family members, access to toilet, electricity and source of drinking water in urban Nepal, using data from the Nepal Fertility and Family Planning Survey, 1986. The analyses showed significant effects of education, access to toilet and electricity in lowering infant and child mortality. Access to toilet and electricity are proxies for household socioeconomic status which suggests that education and household resources are complementary in lowering the infant and child mortality.     

Marital instability among British Pakistanis: transnationality,conjugalities and Islam

This article offers insights into the dynamics underlying an increase in marital instability in British Pakistani families, thus challenging stereotypes of British South Asian populations as representing ‘old-fashioned’ families, with their lower rates of divorce in contrast with the wider British population. In addition to problems of compatibility, domestic violence and infidelity, we explore dynamics that may be more specific to the British Pakistani population, namely the transnational nature of many marriages, attitudes to parental involvement in arranging marriages, and the place of Islam. We suggest that, while arranged marriages were conventionally seen as safer than love marriages, both young people and their parents may now be viewing arranged marriages as riskier. In an arranged marriage that brings family approval but not personal fulfilment, young people are increasingly supported to divorce and remarry, with a greater degree of personal say in spouse selection.     

Kin and birth order effects on male child mortality: three East Asian populations, 1716–1945

Human child survival depends on adult investment, typically from parents. However, in spite of recent research advances on kin influence and birth order effects on human infant and child mortality, studies that directly examine the interaction of kin context and birth order on sibling differences in child mortality are still rare. Our study supplements this literature with new findings from large-scale individual-level panel data for three East Asian historical populations from northeast China (1789–1909), northeast Japan (1716–1870), and north Taiwan (1906–1945), where preference for sons and first-borns is common. We examine and compare male child mortality risks by presence/absence of co-resident parents, grandparents, and other kin, as well as their interaction effects with birth order. We apply discrete-time event-history analysis on over 172,000 observations of 69,125 boys aged 1–9 years old. We find that in all three populations, while the presence of parents is important for child survival, it is more beneficial to first/early-borns than to later-borns. Effects of other co-resident kin are however null or inconsistent between populations. Our findings underscore the importance of birth order in understanding how differential parental investment may produce child survival differentials between siblings.     

The coevolution of human fertility and wealth inheritance strategies.

Life history theory concerns the scheduling of births and the level of parental investment in each offspring. In most human societies the inheritance of wealth is an important part of parental investment. Patterns of wealth inheritance and other reproductive decisions, such as family size, would be expected to influence each other. Here I present an adaptive model of human reproductive decision-making, using a state-dependent dynamic model. Two decisions made by parents are considered: when to have another baby, and thus the pattern of reproduction through life; and how to allocate resources between children at the end of the parents'' life. Optimal decision rules are those that maximize the number of grandchildren. Decisions are assumed to depend on the state of the parent, which is described at any time by two variables: number of living sons, and wealth. The dynamics of the model are based on a traditional African pastoralist system, but it is general enough to approximate to any means of subsistence where an increase in the amount of wealth owned increases the capacity for future production of resources. The model is used to show that, in the unpredictable environment of a traditional pastoralist society, high fertility and a biasing of wealth inheritance to a small number of children are frequently optimal. Most such societies are now undergoing a transition to lower fertility, known as the demographic transition. The effects on fertility and wealth inheritance strategies of reducing mortality risks, reducing the unpredictability of the environment and increasing the costs of raising children are explored. Reducing mortality has little effect on completed family sizes of living children or on the wealth they inherit. Increasing the costs of raising children decreases optimal fertility and increases the inheritance left to each child at each level of wealth, and has the potential to reduce fertility to very low levels. The results offer an explanation for why wealthy families are frequently also those with the smallest number of children in heterogeneous, post-transition societies.     

Amazonian horticulturalists live in larger,more related groups than hunter–gatherers

The relatedness of human groups has important ramifications for kin (group) selection to favor more collective action and invites the potential for more exploitation by political leaders. Endogamous marriages among kin create intensive kinship systems with high group relatedness, while exogamous marriages among nonrelatives create extensive kinship with low group relatedness. Here, a sample of 58 societies (7,565 adults living in 353 residential groups) shows that average group relatedness is higher in lowland horticulturalists than in hunter–gatherers. Higher relatedness in horticulturalists is remarkable given that village sizes are larger, harboring over twice the average number of adults than in hunter–gatherer camps. The relatedness differential between subsistence regimes increases for larger group sizes. Large and dense networks of kin may have favored an increased propensity for some forms of in-group cooperation and political inequality that emerged relatively recently in human history, after the advent of farming.     

Grandpaternal care and child survival in a pastoralist society in western China

Human parents require significant support to raise multiple, highly dependent offspring. Grandmothers are often highlighted as key allomothers (non-maternal caregivers) and their presence is frequently associated with increased child survivorship, leading some to describe humans as cooperative breeders. Equally well documented is the diversity of human childcare systems, where a wide range of individuals support parents including male kin. However, the role of grandfathers has been less well documented, and they seem to have an inconsistent relationship with child survivorship, dependent on socio-ecological factors. Here, we explore the relationship between grandparental allomothering and child survivorship using demographic and time budget data from a pastoralists community in western China. We find that under-five mortality is negatively associated with grandpaternal, but not grandmaternal, living status. Pastoralists in Maqu have recently transitioned from mobile to half-settled livelihoods in which women are more economically active than males. As a result, women's childcare workloads have decreased, while older men (who are excluded from the household economy) supervise children. Our results suggest that patterns of childcare are flexible and highlight the need to consider social and ecological factors to understand allomothering and child survival.     

Postmarital Residence and Bilateral Kin Associations among Hunter-Gatherers

Dispersal of individuals from their natal communities at sexual maturity is an important determinant of kin association. In this paper we compare postmarital residence patterns among Pumé foragers of Venezuela to investigate the prevalence of sex-biased vs. bilateral residence. This study complements cross-cultural overviews by examining postmarital kin association in relation to individual, longitudinal data on residence within a forager society. Based on cultural norms, the Pumé have been characterized as matrilocal. Analysis of Pumé marriages over a 25-year period finds a predominant pattern of natalocal residence. We emphasize that natalocality, bilocality, and multilocality accomplish similar ends in maximizing bilateral kin affiliations in contrast to sex-biased residential patterns. Bilateral kin association may be especially important in foraging economies where subsistence activities change throughout the year and large kin networks permit greater potential flexibility in residential mobility.     

The prevalence and correlates of consanguineous marriages in Yemen: similarities and contrasts with other Arab countries

Using data on 9762 women from the 1997 Yemen Demographic and Maternal and Child Health Survey, this paper examines the prevalence and socioeconomic correlates of consanguineous marriages in Yemen. The results indicate that 40% of marriages are consanguineous, over 85% of which are between first cousins. The prevalence of consanguineous marriages appears to have increased over time, particularly for the last marriage cohort. As for socioeconomic correlates, the study confirms the inverse association between consanguineous marriages and women's education and occupation, age at marriage and economic status. However, no statistically significant difference in the prevalence of consanguinity has been found by place of residence and geographical region. Somewhat unexpected results have been obtained by husband's background characteristics, with higher educated men and those working in the modern sector of the economy being more likely to be married to cousins.     

Female Mobility and Postmarital Kin Access in a Patrilocal Society

Across a wide variety of cultural settings, kin have been shown to play an important role in promoting women’s reproductive success. Patrilocal postmarital residence is a potential hindrance to maintaining these support networks, raising the question: how do women preserve and foster relationships with their natal kin when propinquity is disrupted? Using census and interview data from the Himba, a group of semi-nomadic African pastoralists, I first show that although women have reduced kin propinquity after marriage, more than half of married women are visiting with their kin at a given time. Mobility recall data further show that married women travel more than unmarried women, and that women consistently return to stay with kin around the time of giving birth. Divorce and death of a spouse also trigger a return to living with kin, leading to a cumulative pattern of kin coresidence across the lifespan. These data suggest that patrilocality may be less of a constraint on female kin support than has been previously assumed.     

Fasu Solidarity: A Case Study of Kin Networks, Land Tenure, and Oil Extraction in Kutubu, Papua New Guinea

In the Fasu region of Papua New Guinea's fringe highlands, the oil extraction industry has imposed development values and the identification of corporate groups as beneficiary landowners. In response, Fasu males have tightened the boundaries of their agnatic descent groups to become exclusive patriunits. Cash royalties are incorporated into sociopolitical exchange, so the formation of exclusive kin groups allows males to expand social networks to other regions, whilst ensuring continuing wealth for future generations. Consequently, males are becoming isolated from pre–oil exchange networks, and females are becoming isolated within villages. In this article, I map the transition of Fasu kin networks from an ideology of descent to a dogma of descent and patrilineal solidarity, locating the transition in the symbolic codes that inform kin categories. I aim to highlight some consequences of "development" and to advance knowledge on the link between kinship and descent in a postcolonial, industry-dominated Papua New Guinea.     

Prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of consanguineous marriages in Turkey

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of consanguineous marriages in Turkey using data derived from the 2003 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS-2003). Demographic surveys conducted in the last 40 years consistently show that Turkey is a country with a high level of consanguinity. In the latest demographic survey (TDHS-2003), a nationally representative sample of 8075 ever-married women, consanguineous marriages accounted for 22% of the total, which is equivalent to a mean coefficient of inbreeding (alpha) of 0.011. There are changing secular profiles in the rates of consanguinity in general and of the specific sub-types of cousin marriages in particular in Turkey. The prevalence of first cousin marriages among all consanguineous marriages presents a steady decline from one marriage cohort to the next. The changes observed over time may be attributable to several factors such as the increase in educational level of women, the nuclearization of the family system, the mobility from rural to urban settings, a better socioeconomic status of families, an increase in women's labour force participation in formal sectors, lower fertility rates resulting in a smaller number of cousins available for marriage, and an increased awareness of the effects of consanguineous unions on child health in cases where there is an inherited recessive disease in the family. Any attempts to discourage consanguinity at the population level appear to be inappropriate and undesirable, especially when the consanguineous union remains an integral part of the cultural and social life of Turkey. Nevertheless the WHO-recommended approach to minimizing the negative effects of consanguinity on child health should be followed, i.e. the identification of families with a high risk of a genetic disease and the provision of prospective genetic counselling.     

Multivariate analysis of infant and child mortality in Java and Bali

The data used in this analysis come from the 1976 Indonesian Fertility Survey, part of the World Fertility Survey. The data are examined 3 times, fitting them to models which include different combinations of independent variables. The dependent variables are: 1) the proportion of children born between 5 and 15 years before the survey who died before their 1st birthday, for infant mortality; and 2) among those alive on their 1st birthday, the proportions who died before reaching their 5th birthday, for child mortality. The figures indicate that the chance of dying for children who were 1st born, born shortly after a previous child, whose previous sibling had died, who lived in rural areas, or had parents who were young and with little education, was greater than for children without these characteristics. In all 3 models used, the greatest net effects are attributed to the survival of a preceding sibling or the length of the preceding interval. Birth order does not have a significant gross effect on infant mortality, but the net effects are significant because of the control on maternal age. Education of both parents has significant effects, but these are overshadowed in magnitude by the demographic variables. Maternal education has a greater influence in determining differences in child mortality than was found for infant mortality. Father's education also has a significant independent effect, but mainly for 1st births. It is uncertain whether these variables are measuring the effect of schooling as such, or other characteristics such as economic status or various social roles adopted by people with different levels of education. The variables distinguishing urban from rural status shows significant gross effects which are greatly reduced when controls for other variables are introduced in the model which includes all births. That is to say, the difference in the survival chances of a child in the city is more a function of the education of its parents, and the associated demographic variables than city residence as such. Access to medical services is quite probably the main element in these differences. The findings are weakened to some extent by the lack of satisfactory data on household economic status which might have provided a better base for indirectly discerning the effects of nutrition and sanitation on mortality at young ages.     

Inheritance of wealth as human kin investment

Like many other animals, humans appear to have evolved to invest time and energy in their relatives in order to maximize inclusive fitness. Inheritance of material wealth may be a uniquely human form of kin investment. If fitness-maximizing dispositions do influence will-makers, beneficiaries may be favored according to their relatedness and reproductive value. An analysis of 1000 probated wills showed that this was the case. Close relatives were favored over distant kin, as were kin of higher reproductive value. Wealthier decedents favored male kin, while poorer decedents favored females. This pattern might reflect a facultative shifting of resources toward males when the family's resources are sufficient to ensure reproductive competitiveness, and toward the safer option of females when resources are less abundant. The results support the possibility that fitness-maximizing dispositions do influence will-makers. It is likely that such dispositions are flexible and responsive to the physical and social environment.     

Maternal age at last birth in Egypt

To assess the effects of women's education, residence, and marital experience on their age at the birth of their last child, a proportional hazards regression model was applied to 1980 Egyptian Fertility Survey (EFS) data. The detailed data include the date of birth of each child for every women interviewed, and the woman's date of birth and age at interview. Age at last birth was examined by regression analysis on birth history and socioeconomic information. 4 hypotheses were tested: women who are well educated have a greater probability of ending childbearing earlier than women with less education; women in rural areas have a higher probability of having their last child at older ages than urban women; marital disruption without remarriage lowers the probability of older maternal age at last birth; and marital disruption with remarriage increases the probability that a woman stops reproducing at an older age. The overall chi-square indicates a significant regression. All coefficients were significant, except the coefficient for women with intact 1st marriages. Women with more education had a greater probability of ending childbearing earlier than women with less education. Rural women tended to have their last children at ages significantly older than overall age at last birth. Current residence in urban areas had the opposite effect. The coefficient for those with intact 1st marriages was insignificant, meaning that the mean age at last birth for this group of women was not much different from the overall mean. Remarried women tended to end childbearing at ages significantly older than the overall average age at last birth, suggesting that these women tended to have children by their new husbands. Those with dissolved 1st marriages who had not remarried had a higher probability of ending childbearing earlier than did older women. Marriage age and final parity had highly significant negative coefficients; as marriage age and number of children born increased, so did the "survival" time or the age at last birth. Results from the hazards model indicate that the effects were as anticipated. The median age at last birth for the total sample of women aged 45-49 was 45-49 years. The median age at last birth was about 2 years older for rural compared to urban women. Illiterate women had the oldest median age at last birth of the education groups. There was little differences between median ages at last birth for women with intact 1st marriages and those whose 1st unions were dissolved and who had remarried. The median age at last birth increased with final parity.     

Family-building patterns and childhood mortality: a family-level analysis

It has been suggested that altering the pace of reproduction would improve the health of women and children. For formulating intervention policies, it is important to know whether on its own such a strategy is likely to lead to risk reduction. This paper analyses mortality risk in sibships to explore the relationship between family formation factors and other household characteristics that identify women whose families are at higher risk. The analysis allows for the fact that reproductive behaviour may be modified by the family's prior experience of child death, using simultaneous equations methods to purge the model of the 'feedback' effects of death on the endogenous variable, childbearing pace. The strong relationship between reproductive pace and average risk in a family appears to be due to the association of both with other differences between households. Other aspects of family formation patterns are good indicators of which families are likely to experience excess risks to their children. These factors are associated with maternal education, but measure characteristics of the family or mother that educational attainment does not fully capture. They indicate that high-risk mothers are likely to have less control over many aspects of their lives. The pace of family building does not lead to excess average family risk, but may result, at least in part, from the concentration of risk in families with other characteristic patterns of family formation and few resources. The paper argues for a broader conception of household influences on child health and the health-related behaviour of parents.     

Child health in rural Colombia: determinants and policy interventions

We study the determinants of child anthropometrics on a sample of poor Colombian children living in small municipalities. We focus on the influence of household consumption, and public infrastructure, taking into account the endogeneity of household consumption using two different sets of instruments: household assets and municipality average wage. We find that both household consumption and public infrastructure are important determinants of child health. We have also found that the coverage of the piped water network positively influenced child health if the parents have some education.