Work to Live and Live to Work: Productivity, Transfers, and Psychological Well-Being in Adulthood and Old Age

This paper considers psychological well-being in adulthood and old age, in light of the economic and social structure of the evolved human life history. Psychological well-being is the subject of significant scientific inquiry in large-scale modern societies (e.g., Easterlin, 2003; Blanchflower and Oswald, 2008; Diener and Chan, 2011), and it is often associated with economic productivity, social status, and network strength. However, very little is known about the evolutionary origins of mood variation or about mood variation during the course of human evolution. In fact, it has been suggested that depression is a maladaptive by-product of modern lifestyles due to inadequate pathogenic exposure in development, low physical activity level, high prevalence of metabolic disorder, or high levels of psychosocial stress from economic inequality, intense social competition, and residential isolation from kin (Raison et al., 2010; Rook et al., 2013). One way to assess evolutionary implications of mood variation is to focus on small-scale societies. Small-scale societies possess similar socioecological features typical of the vast majority of human evolutionary history, including food insecurity, limited material wealth, and high pathogen burden coupled with little access to health care, but also frequent resource pooling, relative egalitarianism, and minimal social isolation. Research into psychological well-being in small-scale societies can (a) determine whether mood disorders exist, and if so, examine whether risk factors and buffers 9