Son to Father Reciprocity and Encephalization in Early Humans

John M. Hartwick

No 273719, Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics

Abstract: Humans exhibit much more sharing of food harvested by prime- age hunter-gatherers with dependents relative to such sharing by lower-order primates. We investigate this behavior in a model in which a father provides generously to his dependent child-son in period t in the hope that this gesture will inspire his son to recip- rocate in the next period when the father is in "retirement". In our formulation fathers provide better when (a) they are smarter hunters (b) they have a higher probability of living to experience a "retirement" and (c) when they are more con dent that their child-sons will indeed provide generously for them in their "retire- ment". Better food provision by prime-age fathers is associated with brain-size expansion in our model.

Keywords: Financial Economics; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2009-11
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:quedwp:273719

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.273719

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