Sear Rebecca, Lawson David W, Kaplan Hillard, Shenk Mary K
Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2016 Apr 19;371(1692):20150144. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0144.
Decades of research on human fertility has presented a clear picture of how fertility varies, including its dramatic decline over the last two centuries in most parts of the world. Why fertility varies, both between and within populations, is not nearly so well understood. Fertility is a complex phenomenon, partly physiologically and partly behaviourally determined, thus an interdisciplinary approach is required to understand it. Evolutionary demographers have focused on human fertility since the 1980s. The first wave of evolutionary demographic research made major theoretical and empirical advances, investigating variation in fertility primarily in terms of fitness maximization. Research focused particularly on variation within high-fertility populations and small-scale subsistence societies and also yielded a number of hypotheses for why fitness maximization seems to break down as fertility declines during the demographic transition. A second wave of evolutionary demography research on fertility is now underway, paying much more attention to the cultural and psychological mechanisms underpinning fertility. It is also engaging with the complex, multi-causal nature of fertility variation, and with understanding fertility in complex modern and transitioning societies. Here, we summarize the history of evolutionary demographic work on human fertility, describe the current state of the field, and suggest future directions.
数十年来对人类生育力的研究已经清晰地呈现了生育力如何变化的图景，包括在过去两个世纪里世界大部分地区生育力的急剧下降。然而，关于生育力为何在不同人群之间以及同一人群内部存在差异，人们的了解却远没有这么深入。生育力是一个复杂的现象，部分由生理因素决定，部分由行为因素决定，因此需要采用跨学科的方法来理解它。自20世纪80年代以来，进化人口学家一直关注人类生育力。进化人口学研究的第一波取得了重大的理论和实证进展，主要从适应性最大化的角度研究生育力的变化。研究特别关注高生育率人群和小规模自给自足社会内部的差异，也产生了一些关于为什么在人口转型期间随着生育力下降适应性最大化似乎会失效的假设。现在，关于生育力的进化人口学研究的第二波正在进行中，更加关注支撑生育力的文化和心理机制。它也在探讨生育力变化的复杂的、多因果的本质，以及理解复杂的现代社会和转型社会中的生育力。在这里，我们总结了进化人口学关于人类生育力的研究历史，描述了该领域的现状，并提出了未来的方向。
