The Evolutionary Demography of Religion
By Laure Spake in evolutionary anthropology demography religion cooperative breeding
July 1, 2020
The Evolutionary Demography of Religion
Our team collaborates on the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project, a mixed-method cross-cultural project. Learn more about the project and the full team here.
Goal: In post-industrial societies, the number of children in a family is negatively correlated with each child’s success. In these same settings, religious families tend to have more children than their secular counterparts - and yet children from religious families do not exhibit the negative consequences of larger family sizes. The project team hypothesizes that religious families are able to achieve this through increased collaboration with each other, particularly in the form of childcare.
The project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton Religion Trust, grants awarded to project PIs: John Shaver, Richard Sosis, Rebecca Sear, and Mary Shenk.
Project status
The first round of data collection for this project is complete. Currently, we are designing a second round of data collection in the Gambia, in which we will re-visit a subset of participants and their children. Several lab members are actively contributing to data analysis from this project.
Publications from this project
Schaffnit SB, Lynch R, Spake L, Sear R, Sosis R, Shaver J, Alam N, Blumenfield T, Mattison S, Shenk M. 2023. The impact of market integration on arranged and love marriages in Matlab, Bangladesh. Evolutionary Human Sciences 5:e5. DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2022.54.
Spake L, Schaffnit SB, Sear R, Shenk M, Sosis R, Shaver JH. 2021. Mothers’ partnership status and allomothering networks in the United Kingdom and United States. Social Sciences 10:182. DOI: 10.3390/socsci10050182.
Selected conference presentations from this project
Hassan A, Sear R, Spake L, Schaffnit S, Chvaja R, Shaver J, & The Evolutionary Demography of Religion Team. 2023. Allomothering networks in cross-cultural perspective: who helps mothers and what do they help with? BSPS, Keele, UK.
Spake L, Hassan A, Badjie J, Sear R, Shenk MK, Sosis R, Shaver JH. 2022. Provisioning, but not other types of allomothering, may promote healthy growth in children. AAA, Seattle.