Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Queen's University, Jeffery Hall, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada.
Arch Sex Behav. 2012 Dec;41(6):1409-14. doi: 10.1007/s10508-012-9949-z. Epub 2012 Apr 7.
Theories of "life history evolution" suggest that individuals might adjust the timing of marriage and reproduction, as well as their propensity to terminate a marriage or pregnancy and invest in skill development, in response to indicators of the locally prevailing level of life expectancy. In particular, such theories generate the hypothesis that foreshortened time horizons lead to hastened reproduction and marriage whereas lengthier time horizons increase the likelihood of reproductive and marital termination and lead to greater investment in education. Here, I show that the scheduling and occurrence of marital and reproductive behavior (including both initiation and termination), as well as levels of educational attainment and investment, covary with life expectancy, even after controlling for the effects of affluence. In analyses of variation in marital, reproductive, and educational behaviors at two jurisdictional levels in Canada, life expectancy was positively correlated with patterns of age-specific fertility, age at first marriage, divorce, abortion, conferral of high school and higher education degrees (with the exception of the trades) and mean number of years of schooling. The large and highly consistent relationships observed between life expectancy and the behaviors under investigation suggest that these associations may be mediated by individual "perceptions" of life expectancy, though more research is needed before conclusions can be firmly reached.
“生命史进化”理论表明，个体可能会根据当地预期寿命的指标，调整婚姻和生育的时间，以及结束婚姻或怀孕并投资于技能发展的倾向。具体而言，这些理论提出了这样一种假设，即较短的时间跨度会导致生育和婚姻的提前，而较长的时间跨度则会增加生育和婚姻结束的可能性，并导致更多的教育投资。在这里，我表明，即使在控制了富裕程度的影响之后，婚姻和生育行为的安排和发生（包括开始和结束）以及教育程度和投资水平，都与预期寿命相关。在对加拿大两个司法管辖区的婚姻、生育和教育行为的变异进行分析时，预期寿命与特定年龄生育率、初婚年龄、离婚、堕胎、高中和高等教育学位授予（除了贸易）以及平均受教育年限呈正相关。预期寿命与被调查行为之间观察到的大而高度一致的关系表明，这些关联可能是通过个体对预期寿命的“感知”来介导的，尽管在得出结论之前还需要更多的研究。
