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The cultural evolution of fertility decline
Cultural evolutionists have long been interested in the problem of why fertility declines as populations develop. By outlining plausible mechanistic links between individual decision-making, information flow in populations and competition between groups, models of cultural evolution offer a novel an...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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The Royal Society
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27022079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0152 |
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author | Colleran, Heidi |
author_facet | Colleran, Heidi |
author_sort | Colleran, Heidi |
collection | PubMed |
description | Cultural evolutionists have long been interested in the problem of why fertility declines as populations develop. By outlining plausible mechanistic links between individual decision-making, information flow in populations and competition between groups, models of cultural evolution offer a novel and powerful approach for integrating multiple levels of explanation of fertility transitions. However, only a modest number of models have been published. Their assumptions often differ from those in other evolutionary approaches to social behaviour, but their empirical predictions are often similar. Here I offer the first overview of cultural evolutionary research on demographic transition, critically compare it with approaches taken by other evolutionary researchers, identify gaps and overlaps, and highlight parallel debates in demography. I suggest that researchers divide their labour between three distinct phases of fertility decline—the origin, spread and maintenance of low fertility—each of which may be driven by different causal processes, at different scales, requiring different theoretical and empirical tools. A comparative, multi-level and mechanistic framework is essential for elucidating both the evolved aspects of our psychology that govern reproductive decision-making, and the social, ecological and cultural contingencies that precipitate and sustain fertility decline. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4822432 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48224322016-04-19 The cultural evolution of fertility decline Colleran, Heidi Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles Cultural evolutionists have long been interested in the problem of why fertility declines as populations develop. By outlining plausible mechanistic links between individual decision-making, information flow in populations and competition between groups, models of cultural evolution offer a novel and powerful approach for integrating multiple levels of explanation of fertility transitions. However, only a modest number of models have been published. Their assumptions often differ from those in other evolutionary approaches to social behaviour, but their empirical predictions are often similar. Here I offer the first overview of cultural evolutionary research on demographic transition, critically compare it with approaches taken by other evolutionary researchers, identify gaps and overlaps, and highlight parallel debates in demography. I suggest that researchers divide their labour between three distinct phases of fertility decline—the origin, spread and maintenance of low fertility—each of which may be driven by different causal processes, at different scales, requiring different theoretical and empirical tools. A comparative, multi-level and mechanistic framework is essential for elucidating both the evolved aspects of our psychology that govern reproductive decision-making, and the social, ecological and cultural contingencies that precipitate and sustain fertility decline. The Royal Society 2016-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4822432/ /pubmed/27022079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0152 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Colleran, Heidi The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title | The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title_full | The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title_fullStr | The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title_full_unstemmed | The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title_short | The cultural evolution of fertility decline |
title_sort | cultural evolution of fertility decline |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27022079 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0152 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT colleranheidi theculturalevolutionoffertilitydecline AT colleranheidi culturalevolutionoffertilitydecline |