In the course of demographic transitions (DTs), two large-scale trends become apparent: (i) the broadly positive association between wealth, status and fertility tends to reverse, and (ii) wealth inequalities increase and then temporarily decrease. We argue that these two broad patterns are linked, through a diversification of reproductive strategies that subsequently converge as populations co...

Evidence of trends in fertility and related variables in Pakistan during the 1970s is analyzed using data from 2 comparable surveys: the 1975 Pakistan Fertility Survey (PFS) and the 1979-80 Population, Labor Force and Migration Survey (PLM). Both suggest that fertility was fairly constant, with a total fertility rate around 7.0 until the 5-year period preceding the surveys (1970-74 and 1975-7...

Explaining why fertility declines as populations modernize is a profound theoretical challenge. It remains unclear whether the fundamental drivers are economic or cultural in nature. Cultural evolutionary theory suggests that community-level characteristics, for example average education, can alter how low-fertility preferences are transmitted and adopted. These assumptions have not been empiri...

This work incorporates Selectional Preferences (SP) into a Semantic Role (SR) Classification system. We learn separate selectional preferences for noun phrases and prepositional phrases and we integrate them in a state-of-the-art SR classification system both in the form of features and individual class predictors. We show that the inclusion of the refined SPs yields statistically significant i...

Each month many women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Whereas research finds that this cycle influences women’s mating preferences, we propose that it might also change women’s political and religious views. Building on theory suggesting that political and religious orientation are linked to reproductive goals, we tested how fertility influenced women’s politics, religio...

Many preference aggregation problems are not, by nature, one-shot. In these settings, voter preferences need to be repeatedly aggregated as a function of the underlying pool of options that are being voted over. For example, imagine that a firm votes an offer to a candidate. If the offer is declined, then the pool of options shrinks, votes are aggregated once more, and a subsequent offer is mad...

Expressed mate preferences provide unique windows into evolved mating psychology. The current study used two research instruments—one ranking and one rating procedure—to examine mate preferences in India. We compared modern Indians (n = 536) with a more modest Indian sample studied a quarter of a century earlier (n = 105) to test the hypothesis that sex-specific mate preferences—as hypothesized...

Kenya's national survey data have shown patterns of fertility decline in the more socioeconomically advantaged regions. In the central areas, where urbanization and economic development is the highest, fertility has begun to decline rapidly. The lowest fertility was in Nairobi capital region; the Coast Province also experienced recent fertility decline. Fertility has remained high in the Wester...

Recent studies have reported that women exhibit elevated preferences for behavioral dominance in potential mates on higher fertility days of the menstrual cycle. This study was designed to test which hormonal signals may be associated with such cycle phase shifts in dominance preferences. Women indicated their mate preferences for dominant personality traits, and self-reported cycle day was use...

Assortative mating for adiposity, whereby levels of adiposity in romantic partners tend to be positively correlated, has implications for population health due to the combined effects of partners' levels of adiposity on fertility and/or offspring health. Although assortative preferences for cues of adiposity, whereby leaner people are inherently more attracted to leaner individuals, have been p...