Resources and the Life Course: Patterns Through the Demographic Transition

In most mammals, and in the majority of traditional human societies for which data exist, status, power, or resource control correlates with lifetime reproductive success; male and female patterns differ. Because such correlations are often argued to have disappeared in human societies durmg the demographic transitton of the nineteenth century, we analyzed wealth and lifetime reproductive success in a nineteenth-century Swedish population in four economically diverse partshes, subsuming geographic and temporal variation. Chddren of both sexes born to poorer parents were more likely than rtcher children to die or emtgrate before reaching maturity. Poorer men, and women whose fathers were poorer, were less likely to marry in the parish than others, largely as a result of differential mortahty and migration. Of all adults of both sexes who remained in their home parish and thus generated complete hfettme records, richer mdividuals had greater lifetime fertility and more children alive at age ten, than others. The age-specdic fertility of richer women rises slightly sooner, and reaches a hrgher peak, than that of poorer women. These patterns persisted throughout the period of the sample (1824-1896). Thus, wealth appears, even during the demographic transition in an egalitarian society, to have influenced lifetime reproducttve success positively.