Mary K. Shenk, Kathrine Starkweather, Howard Kress, Nurul Alam
This paper examines the effects of three different types of father absence on the timing of life history events among women in rural Bangladesh. Age at marriage and age at first birth are compared across women who experienced different father presence/absence conditions as children. Survival analyse...
Cody T. Ross, Paul L. Hooper, Jennifer E. Smith, Adrian V. Jaeggi et al.
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reprod...
Kathrine Starkweather, Adam Z. Reynolds, Fatema Tuz Zohora, Nurul Alam
Across human societies, women's economic production and their contributions to childcare are critical in supporting reproductive fitness for themselves, their spouses and children. Yet, the necessity of performing both work and childcare tasks presents women with an adaptive problem in which they mu...
Kathrine Starkweather, Mary K. Shenk, Richard McElreath
Evolutionary treatments of women's work and the sexual division of labour derive from sexual selection theory and focus on an observed cross-cultural trend: tasks performed by women tend to be more compatible with childcare and produce less economic risk than tasks performed by men. Evolutionary mod...
Abigail E. Page, Erik J. Ringen, Jeremy Koster, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder et al.
While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities-incorporating market integration-are associated with fertility in 10,250...
Kathrine Starkweather, Monica Keith, Sean P. Prall, Nurul Alam et al.
Abstract Biparental care is a hallmark of human social organization, though paternal investment varies between and within societies. The facultative nature of paternal care in humans suggests males should invest when their care improves child survival and/or quality, though testing this prediction c...
Kathrine Starkweather
The Shodagor of Matlab, Bangladesh, are a seminomadic community of people who live and work on small wooden boats, within the extensive system of rivers and canals that traverse the country. This unique ecology places particular constraints on family and economic life and leads to Shodagor parents e...
Kathrine Starkweather, Monica Keith
Maternal uncle relationships in which men invest resources (usually in the form of inheritance of material wealth) into their sisters' children are characteristic of matrilineal systems and hypothesized to arise under certain socioecological circumstances, but little research has systematically inve...
Kathrine Starkweather, Monica Keith, Fatema Tuz Zohora, Nurul Alam
OBJECTIVES: As climate change continues to increase the frequency and severity of flooding in Bangladesh and globally, it becomes increasingly critical to understand the pathways through which flooding influences health outcomes, particularly in lower-income and subsistence-based communities. We aim...
Mary K. Shenk, Mary C. Towner, Kathrine Starkweather, Curtis Atkisson et al.
Kathrine Starkweather, Monica Keith, Fatema Tuz Zohora, Nurul Alam
For decades, women's employment has been seen as crucial for achieving greater autonomy and empowerment for women, and for promoting better health and nutrition outcomes for children, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, numerous empirical studies of the relationship bet...
Kathrine Starkweather, Haley B. Ragsdale, Margaret Butler, Fatema Tuj Zohora et al.
BACKGROUND: Climate change is a growing threat to population health, with dangerous combinations of heat and humidity increasing in frequency, particularly in South Asia. Evidence suggests that high temperatures and heat stress influence breastfeeding behaviour and may lead to suboptimal infant and ...
Kathrine Starkweather, Mary K. Shenk
Mary K. Shenk, Kathrine Starkweather, Howard Kress, Nurul Alam
This paper examines the effects of three different types of father absence on the timing of life history events among women in rural Bangladesh. Age at marriage and age at first birth are compared across women who experienced different father presence/absence conditions as children. Survival analyse...