Kaptijn Ralf, Thomese Fleur, Liefbroer Aart C, Van Poppel Frans, Van Bodegom David, Westendorp Rudi G J
VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2015 Dec 17;10(12):e0144353. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144353. eCollection 2015.
Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the relationship between women's fertility and their post-reproductive longevity. In this study, we focus on the disposable soma theory, which posits that a negative relationship between women's fertility and longevity can be understood as an evolutionary trade-off between reproduction and survival. We examine the relationship between fertility and longevity during the epidemiological transition in the Netherlands. This period of rapid decline in mortality from infectious diseases offers a good opportunity to study the relationship between fertility and longevity, using registry data from 6,359 women born in The Netherlands between 1850 and 1910. We hypothesize that an initially negative relationship between women's fertility and their longevity gradually turns less negative during the epidemiological transition, because of decreasing costs of higher parities. An initially inversed U-shaped association between fertility and longevity changes to zero during the epidemiological transition. This does suggest a diminishing environmental pressure on fertility. However, we find no evidence of an initial linear trade-off between fertility and post-reproductive survival.
为了解释女性生育能力与其生殖后期寿命之间的关系，人们提出了几种假说。在本研究中，我们关注的是“可抛弃体细胞理论”，该理论认为，女性生育能力与寿命之间的负相关关系可被理解为繁殖与生存之间的一种进化权衡。我们研究了荷兰流行病学转变期间生育能力与寿命之间的关系。传染病死亡率迅速下降的这一时期为利用1850年至1910年间出生在荷兰的6359名女性的登记数据研究生育能力与寿命之间的关系提供了一个很好的机会。我们假设，由于高生育胎次成本的降低，女性生育能力与寿命之间最初的负相关关系在流行病学转变期间会逐渐变得不那么负相关。生育能力与寿命之间最初的倒U形关联在流行病学转变期间变为零。这确实表明环境对生育能力的压力在减小。然而，我们没有发现生育能力与生殖后期生存之间最初存在线性权衡的证据。
