Fieder Martin, Huber Susanne
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Biodemography Soc Biol. 2020 Jan-Mar;65(1):31-40. doi: 10.1080/19485565.2019.1689351.
From an evolutionary perspective, for women mate choice may be of crucial importance particularly concerning resources needed for rearing children. In modern societies, however, resources in terms of income are often provided by both women and men. Nonetheless, the effects of a wife's and husband's socioeconomic status on the wife's reproduction have not been investigated on a broader level. We therefore aim to investigate the effects of wife's and husband's income on wife's number of children and her probability of remaining childless using census data from nine countries mainly in the developing world for a total of 782,147 women aged 45-54 years who currently live with a husband and their spouses. Overall, both wife's and husband's income are significantly negatively associated with wife's number of children. Only in Israel do we find a positive association between husband's income and wife's offspring number. A wife's probability of remaining childless, however, increases with increasing own, but decreases with increasing husband's income. We conclude that in this sample of nearly all developing countries, effects of husband's socioeconomic status on wife's reproduction are acting through childlessness.
从进化的角度来看，对于女性而言，配偶选择可能至关重要，尤其是在养育子女所需资源方面。然而，在现代社会，收入方面的资源通常由男性和女性共同提供。尽管如此，妻子和丈夫的社会经济地位对妻子生育情况的影响尚未在更广泛的层面上进行研究。因此，我们旨在利用来自九个主要为发展中国家的人口普查数据，对782,147名年龄在45至54岁、目前与丈夫及其配偶共同生活的女性进行研究，以调查妻子和丈夫的收入对妻子子女数量以及其无子女概率的影响。总体而言，妻子和丈夫的收入均与妻子的子女数量呈显著负相关。只有在以色列，我们发现丈夫的收入与妻子的子女数量呈正相关。然而，妻子无子女的概率会随着自身收入的增加而增加，但会随着丈夫收入的增加而降低。我们得出结论，在这个几乎涵盖所有发展中国家的样本中，丈夫的社会经济地位对妻子生育情况的影响是通过无子女状况体现的。
