This project represents a unique attempt to integrate the approaches of evolutionary anthropology, demography, and microeconomics in the study of marriage and parenting behavior. Within anthropology, the subdiscipline of human behavioral ecology (HBE) combines theory from evolutionary biology and economics with methods from biology and anthropology to explore the causes and consequences of distinct behavioral strategies in different socioecological environments. This application proposes to combine the theoretical approach of HBE with new methodological training in economics and demography to increase the explanatory power of HBE models and extend their scope outside the discipline of anthropology. Specifically, training will be undertaken in formal demography, microeconomic and econometric modeling, and agent-based modeling techniques, and these methods will be applied to three specific theoretical and empirical problems in the evolutionary and economic analyses of marriage and parenting. Two existing datasets South Asian demographic datasets will be utilized for this research, and several specific publications are planned. ? ? ?
| Shenk, Mary K (2009) Testing three evolutionary models of the demographic transition: Patterns of fertility and age at marriage in urban South India. Am J Hum Biol 21:501-11 |
