Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Parental Investment And Child Health In A Yanomamö Village Suffering Short Term Food Stress, Hagen H. Edward, Raymond B. Hames, Nathan M. Craig, Matthew T. Lauer, Michael E. Price

Nathan M Craig

The 1998 El Niño significantly reduced garden productivity in the Upper Orinoco region in Venezuela. Consequently, parents were forced to allocate food carefully to their children. Nutrition data collected from village children combined with genealogical data allowed the determination of which children suffered most, and whether the patterns of food distribution accorded with predictions from parental investment theory. For boys, three social variables accounted for over 70% of the variance in subcutaneous fat after controlling for age: number of siblings, age of the mother’s youngest child, and whether the mother was the senior or junior co-wife, or was married monogamously. …