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Copyright

Kai P. Willführ; Jonathan F. Fox; Eckart Voland;

Published On

2024-06-14

Page Range

pp. 617–634

Language

  • English

Print Length

18 pages

26. Historical Family Reconstitution Databases in the Study of Kinship Influences on Demographic Outcomes

Chapter of: Human Evolutionary Demography(pp. 617–634)
Human life histories and demographic outcomes are impacted by kin behaviour in diverse ways, and human evolutionary theory is essential to understanding how environmental context and kin relationship moderate this behaviour in cooperative versus competitive directions. However, kin presence is simultaneously correlated with behavioural and non-behavioural factors such as risk of infection or familial wealth. As such, it can be hard to disentangle evolutionary effects from other factors correlated within a family. In this chapter we discuss how historical family reconstitution databases have assisted in the investigation of kin effects and their advantages in disentangling these behavioural kin effects from non-behavioural accompanying factors. A variety of family reconstitution studies exist across varying geographic and cultural contexts, and their application to kinship research has resulted in varying findings. This highlights how kin impacts differ depending on circumstance. We describe several family reconstitution studies and discuss the importance of evolutionary theory in understanding kin effects across different populations.

Contributors

Kai P. Willführ

(author)
researcher at the Institute for Social Science at University of Oldenburg
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4207-3016

Kai P. Willführ is a researcher at the Institute for Social Science at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany, and a guest researcher the Center for Economic Demography at Lund University in Sweden. Kai studied biology at the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen, Germany, where he also obtained his PhD. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. He conducts interdisciplinary research in evolutionary anthropology, demography, and other fields of quantitative social sciences. One focus of his research is on how family networks influence lives of people throughout history until today, for instance, whether mortality of mothers is reduced by supportive kin.

Jonathan F. Fox

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8249-3520

Jonathan F. Fox currently operates an economics consulting practice dedicated to economics, statistics, healthcare markets, and public health. Dr. Fox received his PhD in Economics from the University of Arizona in 2010, was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, and an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. He conducts interdisciplinary research in economics, demography, public health, and other fields of quantitative social sciences. His research uses large panel datasets and qualitative information to investigate how local conditions such as family composition and the provision of local public goods can affect individual outcomes. ORCID: 0000-0001-8249-3520

Eckart Voland

(author)
Professor Emeritus for Philosophy of Life Sciences at University of Giessen
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2283-2735
https://eckart-voland.de/

Eckart Voland is professor emeritus for philosophy of life sciences at the University of Giessen, Germany. His main research interests are human sociobiology and behavioral ecology. In particular he is interested in the biological evolution of social and reproductive strategies in humans. Moreover, in pursuing the project of naturalizing the human mind and its achievements he works on philosophical implications of evolutionary anthropology as reflected in evolutionary ethics and aesthetics. See https://eckart-voland.de/ for more details and of full list of his publications.