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Copyright

Rebecca Sear; Oskar Burger; Ronald Lee;

Published On

2024-06-14

Page Range

pp. 1–24

Language

  • English

Print Length

24 pages

1. Human Evolutionary Demography

Introduction and Rationale

Chapter of: Human Evolutionary Demography(pp. 1–24)
Human evolutionary demography combines research in evolutionary biology with the study of human demographic patterns and behaviors. Evolutionary biology and demography share many conceptual features that give rise to a natural complementarity, such as a focus on the population as a unit of study and emphasis on aggregate processes that have implications for individuals. They also have distinct strengths that further this natural partnership. Evolutionary approaches are often top-down and theory driven, while demographic ones are more often bottom-up and driven by data and robust estimation procedures. We suggest that human evolutionary demography reflects these areas of overlap and complementary strengths while emphasizing at least two main objectives: understanding the role of evolutionary processes in shaping population-level demographic patterns (e.g., the evolution of age-specific patterns of mortality or fertility), and using an evolutionary approach to understand contemporary variation between individuals in demographic patterns (e.g., how and why does fertility respond to environmental influences, and vary between and within populations?).

Evolutionary demography is also inherently interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary approaches are vital to furthering our understanding of the complex processes underlying demographic patterns, in part because such approaches can be a disruptive force challenging researchers to question assumptions and see the world differently.

The papers in this volume demonstrate that integration of demography and evolutionary sciences strengthens both. This recognition by an ever-growing number of researchers has resulted in such a successful body of research that we are now able to showcase this field with this collection of papers, illustrating the vibrancy and diversity of research in human evolutionary demography.

Contributors

Rebecca Sear

(author)
Director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4315-0223

Rebecca Sear is a demographer, anthropologist and human behavioural ecologist who works on questions of demographic and public health interest, including fertility and reproductive development, child health and mortality, and health inequalities; with a particular interest in how family relationships influence these outcomes. She is co-Founder of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, and currently Director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London.

Oskar Burger

(author)
Senior Research Manager and head of the Quantitative Best Practices Team at OMNI Institute
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7552-5851

Oskar Burger is Senior Research Manager and head of the Quantitative Best Practices Team at OMNI Institute, an applied social science consultancy. He received his PhD in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in 2011 and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research from 2012 to 2015. He has worked on topics such as aging, population growth, global public health, and program evaluation.

Ronald Lee

(author)
Emeritus Professor of Demography and Economics at University of California, Berkeley
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9755-0436

Ronald Lee is an Emeritus Professor of Demography and Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, with a 1967 MA in Demography from Berkeley and a 1971 Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. His interest in intergenerational transfers in contemporary human societies led him to begin working on evolutionary theories of aging, mathematical life history theory and the evolution of social organization across species.