Mother's social status is associated with child health in a horticulturalist population
Sarah Alami,
Christopher von Rueden,
Edmond Seabright,
Thomas S. Kraft,
Aaron D. Blackwell,
Jonathan Stieglitz,
Hillard Kaplan and
Michael Gurven
Additional contact information
Sarah Alami: IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
Christopher von Rueden: University of Richmond
Edmond Seabright: Department of Anthropology [Albuquerque] - The University of New Mexico [Albuquerque] - NMC - New Mexico Consortium
Thomas S. Kraft: UC - University of California
Aaron D. Blackwell: WSU - Washington State University
Jonathan Stieglitz: IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
Michael Gurven: UC - University of California
Post-Print from HAL
Abstract:
High social status is often associated with greater mating opportunities and fertility for men, but do women also obtain fitness benefits of high status? Greater resource access and child survivorship may be principal pathways through which social status increases women's fitness. Here, we examine whether peer-rankings of women's social status (indicated by political influence, project leadership, and respect) positively covaries with child nutritional status and health in a community of Amazonian horticulturalists. We find that maternal political influence is associated with improved child health outcomes in models adjusting for maternal age, parental height and weight, level of schooling, household income, family size, and number of kin in the community. Children of politically influential women have higher weight-for-age (B = 0.33; 95% CI = 0.12–0.54), height-for-age (B = 0.32; 95% CI = 0.10–0.54), and weight-for-height (B = 0.24; 95% CI = 0.04–0.44), and they are less likely to be diagnosed with common illnesses (OR = 0.48; 95% CI = 0.31–0.76). These results are consistent with women leveraging their social status to enhance reproductive success through improvements in child health. We discuss these results in light of parental investment theory and the implications for the evolution of female social status in humans.
Date: 2020-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Published in Proceedings - Royal society. Biological sciences, 2020, 287 (1922)
There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02550726
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().