IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v13y2022i1d10.1038_s41467-022-30366-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mothers with higher twinning propensity had lower fertility in pre-industrial Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Ian J. Rickard

    (Durham University
    Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research)

  • Colin Vullioud

    (Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research)

  • François Rousset

    (Université de Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD)

  • Erik Postma

    (University of Exeter)

  • Samuli Helle

    (University of Turku)

  • Virpi Lummaa

    (University of Turku)

  • Ritva Kylli

    (University of Oulu)

  • Jenni E. Pettay

    (University of Turku)

  • Eivin Røskaft

    (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

  • Gine R. Skjærvø

    (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

  • Charlotte Störmer

    (Justus Liebig University Gießen)

  • Eckart Voland

    (Justus Liebig University Gießen)

  • Dominique Waldvogel

    (University of Zurich)

  • Alexandre Courtiol

    (Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research)

Abstract

Historically, mothers producing twins gave birth, on average, more often than non-twinners. This observation has been interpreted as twinners having higher intrinsic fertility – a tendency to conceive easily irrespective of age and other factors – which has shaped both hypotheses about why twinning persists and varies across populations, and the design of medical studies on female fertility. Here we show in >20k pre-industrial European mothers that this interpretation results from an ecological fallacy: twinners had more births not due to higher intrinsic fertility, but because mothers that gave birth more accumulated more opportunities to produce twins. Controlling for variation in the exposure to the risk of twinning reveals that mothers with higher twinning propensity – a physiological predisposition to producing twins – had fewer births, and when twin mortality was high, fewer offspring reaching adulthood. Twinning rates may thus be driven by variation in its mortality costs, rather than variation in intrinsic fertility.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian J. Rickard & Colin Vullioud & François Rousset & Erik Postma & Samuli Helle & Virpi Lummaa & Ritva Kylli & Jenni E. Pettay & Eivin Røskaft & Gine R. Skjærvø & Charlotte Störmer & Eckart Voland & D, 2022. "Mothers with higher twinning propensity had lower fertility in pre-industrial Europe," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30366-9
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30366-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30366-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-022-30366-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jenni E Pettay & Mirkka Lahdenperä & Anna Rotkirch & Virpi Lummaa & Jonathan PruittHandling editor, 2018. "Effects of female reproductive competition on birth rate and reproductive scheduling in a historical human population," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(2), pages 333-341.
    2. Florin Vaida & Suzette Blanchard, 2005. "Conditional Akaike information for mixed-effects models," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 92(2), pages 351-370, June.
    3. James R. Bland & Amanda C. Cook, 2019. "Random effects probit and logit: understanding predictions and marginal effects," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 116-123, January.
    4. Gregory Clark & Neil Cummins & Matthew Curtis, 2020. "Twins Support the Absence of Parity-Dependent Fertility Control in Pretransition Populations," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(4), pages 1571-1595, August.
    5. Virpi Lummaa & Erkki Haukioja & Risto Lemmetyinen & Mirja Pikkola, 1998. "Natural selection on human twinning," Nature, Nature, vol. 394(6693), pages 533-534, August.
    6. Jeroen Smits & Christiaan Monden, 2011. "Twinning across the Developing World," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(9), pages 1-5, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bijlsma Ineke & van den Brakel Jan & van der Velden Rolf & Allen Jim, 2020. "Estimating Literacy Levels at a Detailed Regional Level: an Application Using Dutch Data," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 36(2), pages 251-274, June.
    2. Jie Huang & Haiming Zhou & Nader Ebrahimi, 2022. "Bayesian Bivariate Cure Rate Models Using Copula Functions," International Journal of Statistics and Probability, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(3), pages 1-9, May.
    3. Kubokawa, Tatsuya & Nagashima, Bui, 2012. "Parametric bootstrap methods for bias correction in linear mixed models," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Yuzuru Kumon & Mohamed Saleh, 2023. "The Middle‐Eastern marriage pattern? Malthusian dynamics in nineteenth‐century Egypt," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(4), pages 1231-1258, November.
    5. Myung-Jae Hwang & Jong-Hun Kim & Hae-Kwan Cheong, 2020. "Short-Term Impacts of Ambient Air Pollution on Health-Related Quality of Life: A Korea Health Panel Survey Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(23), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Marissa M Rurka & J Jill Suitor & Megan Gilligan & Robert T Frase & Zhen Cong, 2023. "How Do Own and Siblings’ Genders Shape Caregivers’ Risk of Perceiving Care-Related Criticism From Siblings?," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 78(3), pages 520-531.
    7. J. N. K. Rao, 2015. "Inferential issues in model-based small area estimation: some new developments," Statistics in Transition new series, Główny Urząd Statystyczny (Polska), vol. 16(4), pages 491-510, December.
    8. Roland Pongou & David Shapiro & Michel Tenikue, 2019. "Mortality convergence of twins and singletons in sub-Saharan Africa," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(36), pages 1047-1058.
    9. Simona Buscemi & Antonella Plaia, 2020. "Model selection in linear mixed-effect models," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 104(4), pages 529-575, December.
    10. Masahiro Kojima & Tatsuya Kubokawa, 2013. "Bartlett Adjustments for Hypothesis Testing in Linear Models with General Error Covariance Matrices," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-884, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    11. Sun-Joo Cho & Paul Boeck & Susan Embretson & Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, 2014. "Additive Multilevel Item Structure Models with Random Residuals: Item Modeling for Explanation and Item Generation," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 84-104, January.
    12. Ward, Eric J., 2008. "A review and comparison of four commonly used Bayesian and maximum likelihood model selection tools," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 211(1), pages 1-10.
    13. María José Lombardía & Esther López‐Vizcaíno & Cristina Rueda, 2017. "Mixed generalized Akaike information criterion for small area models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 180(4), pages 1229-1252, October.
    14. Mojtaba Ganjali & Taban Baghfalaki, 2018. "Application of Penalized Mixed Model in Identification of Genes in Yeast Cell-Cycle Gene Expression Data," Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 6(2), pages 38-41, April.
    15. Kauermann, Goran & Xu, Ronghui & Vaida, Florin, 2008. "Stacked Laplace-EM algorithm for duration models with time-varying and random effects," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 2514-2528, January.
    16. Philipp F. M. Baumann & Enzo Rossi & Alexander Volkmann, 2020. "What Drives Inflation and How: Evidence from Additive Mixed Models Selected by cAIC," Papers 2006.06274, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    17. Jiang, Jiming & Nguyen, Thuan & Rao, J. Sunil, 2009. "A simplified adaptive fence procedure," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(5), pages 625-629, March.
    18. Kawakubo, Yuki & Kubokawa, Tatsuya, 2014. "Modified conditional AIC in linear mixed models," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 44-56.
    19. Lizandra C. Fabio & Francisco J. A. Cysneiros & Gilberto A. Paula & Jalmar M. F. Carrasco, 2022. "Hierarchical and multivariate regression models to fit correlated asymmetric positive continuous outcomes," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 1435-1459, July.
    20. Zhang, Junchao, 2017. "A dilemma of fertility and female labor supply: Identification using Taiwanese twins," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 47-63.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30366-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.