Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-23-2009
Abstract
Children may be viewed as public goods whereby both parents receive equal genetic benefits yet one parent often invests more heavily than the other.We introduce a microeconomic framework for understanding household investment decisions to address questions concerning conflicts of interest over types and amount of work effort among married men and women. Although gains and costs of marriage may not be spread equally among marriage partners, marriage is still a favorable, efficient outcome under a wide range of conditions. This bioeconomic framework subsumes both cooperative and conflictive views on the sexual division of labor. We test hypotheses concerning marriage markets, assortative mating, and men’s labor motivations among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia and find that: (1) men and women both value work effort in marital partners, (2) marital labor contributions are complementary, (3) work effort is correlated between spouses, (4) total production is correlated with total reproduction, and (5) better hunters have higher fitness gains within marital unions.
Recommended Citation
Gurven, M., Winking, J., Kaplan, H., von Rueden, C., & McAllister, L. (2009). A bioeconomic approach to marriage and the sexual division of labor. Human Nature, 20(2), 151-183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-009-9062-8
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
Included in
Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons, Economic Theory Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Latin American Studies Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Other Economics Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Human Nature, volume 20, issue 2, in 2009. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-009-9062-8