IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1223.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Son To Father Reciprocity And Encephalization In Early Humans

Author

Listed:
  • John Hartwick

Abstract

Humans exhibit much more sharing of food harvested by prime-age hunter-gatherers with dependents relative to such sharing by lower-order primates. We investigate this behavior in a model in which a father provides generously to his dependent child-son in period t in the hope that this gesture will inspire his son to reciprocate in the next period when the father is in "retirement". In our formulation fathers provide better when (a) they are smarter hunters (b) they have a higher probability of living to experience a "retirement" and (c) when they are more con dent that theirchild-sons will indeed provide generously for them in their "retirement". Better food provision by prime-age fathers is associatedwith brain-size expansion in our model.

Suggested Citation

  • John Hartwick, 2009. "Son To Father Reciprocity And Encephalization In Early Humans," Working Paper 1223, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1223
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/qed_wp_1223.pdf
    File Function: First version 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Hartwick, 2010. "Encephalization and division of labor by early humans," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 77-100, July.
    2. Arthur J. Robson & Hillard S. Kaplan, 2003. "The Evolution of Human Life Expectancy and Intelligence in Hunter-Gatherer Economies," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 150-169, March.
    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. Kanazawa, Satoshi, 2005. "Is "discrimination" necessary to explain the sex gap in earnings?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 269-287, April.
    2. James A. Brander, 2007. "Viewpoint: Sustainability: Malthus revisited?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(1), pages 1-38, February.
    3. Feichtinger, Gustav & Wrzaczek, Stefan, 2024. "The optimal momentum of population growth and decline," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 51-66.
    4. Bhaskar, Venkataraman, 2015. "The Demographic Transition and the Position of Women: A Marriage Market Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 10619, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Rodrigo R. Soares & Bruno L. S. Falcão, 2008. "The Demographic Transition and the Sexual Division of Labor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(6), pages 1058-1104, December.
    6. Galor, Oded, 2005. "From Stagnation to Growth: Unified Growth Theory," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 4, pages 171-293, Elsevier.
    7. Erik O. Kimbrough & Nikolaus Robalino & Arthur J. Robson, 2013. "The Evolution of 'Theory of Mind': Theory and Experiments," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1908R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 2014.
    8. Cyrus Chu, C.Y. & Chien, Hung-Ken & Lee, Ronald D., 2010. "The evolutionary theory of time preferences and intergenerational transfers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 451-464, December.
    9. Myrna Wooders & Hugo van den Berg, 2001. "The battle of the sexes over the distribution of male surplus," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(17), pages 1-9.
    10. Galor, Oded & Michalopoulos, Stelios, 2006. "The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Spirit and the Process of Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 6022, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Rodrigo R. Soares, 2005. "Mortality Reductions, Educational Attainment, and Fertility Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 580-601, June.
    12. Oded Galor & Omer Moav, 2004. "Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life Expectancy," GE, Growth, Math methods 0409004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Christian Cordes & Peter Richerson & Georg Schwesinger, 2014. "A corporation’s culture as an impetus for spinoffs and a driving force of industry evolution," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 689-712, July.
    14. Zakharenko, Roman, 2018. "Dead men tell no tales: how the Homo sapiens became Homo economicus," MPRA Paper 90643, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley, 2003. "Viable Tax Constitutions," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 683, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    16. Roman Zakharenko, 2016. "Endogenous growth and demographic transition in a model of cultural transmission," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(5), pages 953-970, December.
    17. Junji Kageyama & Kazuma Sato, 2021. "Explaining the U-shaped life satisfaction: dissatisfaction as a driver of behavior," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 179-202, July.
    18. Norman Schofield, 2015. "Climate Change, Collapse and Social Choice Theory," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 9(1), pages 007-035, October.
    19. Christian Cordes & Tong-Yaa Su & Pontus Strimling, 2019. "A critical human group size and firm size distributions in industries," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 123-144, July.
    20. Francesconi, Marco & Ghiglino, Christian & Perry, Motty, 2009. "On the Origin of the Family," IZA Discussion Papers 4637, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    reciprocity; encephalization; intertemporal division of labor;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:qed:wpaper:1223. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    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.