Stalking the True Self Through the Jungles of Authenticity: Problems, Contradictions, Inconsistencies, Disturbing Findings—and a Possible Way Forward. Roy F. Baumeister. Review of General Psychology, April 26, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268019829472
Abstract: Research on authenticity frequently invokes notions of true self, but is there such thing? The question must be answered twice, given frequent confusion and conflation of self with self-concept. Summarizing and integrating themes from authenticity research as evident in this special issue, I draw these conclusions. True self-concepts are more plausible than genuinely true selves, if the latter are independent entities distinct from actual behavior and experience. Yet rather than a single true self-concept, people have multiple nonfalse ones, none of which is entirely true. Among these, the pragmatically most important is the desired reputation, given the social-cultural orientation of humankind. Desired reputation is more a guide and goal than a reality, but successes and failures at achieving that reputation will produce welcome and unwelcome feelings that are likely reported as feeling authentic and inauthentic (respectively). Understanding authenticity in this way solves some of the perennial problems that beset research and theory on authenticity, especially positive distortion and external rather than internal orientation.
Keywords: true self, self, authenticity, self-knowledge, reputation
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Neuromyths are prevalent and independent of the knowledge of the human brain at the beginning of teacher education
Neuromyths are prevalent and independent of the knowledge of the human brain at the beginning of teacher education. Georg Krammer, Stephan E. Vogel, Tugba Yardimci, Roland H. Grabner. Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung, Apr 8 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s35834-019-00238-2
Abstract: Transferring neuroscientific insights into education has created misconceptions of the human brain, i. e. neuromyths. Studies suggest that neuromyths are widely spread among teachers world-wide. However, it is unclear whether neuromyths already exist at the beginning of teacher education and whether they have a similar prevalence in Austria compared to other countries. The aim of the present study is to address these questions. In addition, this study aims to scrutinize the relationship between knowledge about the human brain and believing in neuromyths. 582 Austrian teacher education students responded to 40 statements of the human brain. Of these 40 statements, 20 were neuromyths and 20 were correct statements about the brain, i. e. neurofacts. Results showed that some neuromyths have a high prevalence already at the beginning of teacher education. Similar to previous findings in other countries, the most widely believed neuromyths were related to learning styles and to a disjoint functioning of the brain hemispheres. Furthermore, neuromyths did not form a unidimensional factor, as assumed—but not tested—by prior studies. Finally, results suggest that the knowledge about the human brain was not related to believing in neuromyths. To summarize, neuromyths are already prevalent at the beginning of teacher education. Teacher education should therefore take care to dispel these neuromyths by addressing neuromyths directly instead of only fostering general knowledge about the human brain. This holds particularly true for those neuromyths that could be potentially harmful when implemented in educational practices.
Keywords: Neuromyths Prevalence Teacher education Neurofacts Factorial structure
Abstract: Transferring neuroscientific insights into education has created misconceptions of the human brain, i. e. neuromyths. Studies suggest that neuromyths are widely spread among teachers world-wide. However, it is unclear whether neuromyths already exist at the beginning of teacher education and whether they have a similar prevalence in Austria compared to other countries. The aim of the present study is to address these questions. In addition, this study aims to scrutinize the relationship between knowledge about the human brain and believing in neuromyths. 582 Austrian teacher education students responded to 40 statements of the human brain. Of these 40 statements, 20 were neuromyths and 20 were correct statements about the brain, i. e. neurofacts. Results showed that some neuromyths have a high prevalence already at the beginning of teacher education. Similar to previous findings in other countries, the most widely believed neuromyths were related to learning styles and to a disjoint functioning of the brain hemispheres. Furthermore, neuromyths did not form a unidimensional factor, as assumed—but not tested—by prior studies. Finally, results suggest that the knowledge about the human brain was not related to believing in neuromyths. To summarize, neuromyths are already prevalent at the beginning of teacher education. Teacher education should therefore take care to dispel these neuromyths by addressing neuromyths directly instead of only fostering general knowledge about the human brain. This holds particularly true for those neuromyths that could be potentially harmful when implemented in educational practices.
Keywords: Neuromyths Prevalence Teacher education Neurofacts Factorial structure
Differences in Gaze Behavior Toward Women and Gynoid Robots: Non-human sexualized representations evoked a higher need for visual exploration
There’s More to Humanity Than Meets the Eye: Differences in Gaze Behavior Toward Women and Gynoid Robots. Jessica M. Szczuka, Nicole C. Krämer. Front. Psychol., April 24 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00693
Abstract: Based on evolutionary psychological theories, numerous eye-tracking studies have demonstrated how people visually perceive a potential mate in order to efficiently estimate the person’s mate value. Companies are currently working on sexualized robots that provide numerous human-like visual cues which foster the visual resemblance to humans. To gain more elaborated knowledge on how people react to sexualized robots compared with humans, the present study empirically investigated whether heterosexual males transfer deep-rooted evolutionary psychological processes of mate perception to human-like and machine-like sexualized robots. Moreover, we aimed to learn more about the processes of orienting responses toward human and non-human stimuli and about potential predictors of visual attention to robots. Therefore, we conducted an eye-tracking study in which 15 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 18 heterosexual women were confronted with stimuli showing women, human-like gynoid robots and machine-like gynoid robots. For the sample as a whole, there was no difference in the amount of time spent looking at the human and non-human breasts. However, the results for the heterosexual males supported the assumption that human breasts attract more visual attention than do the breast areas of human-like and machine-like robots. The pelvic region yielded an unexpected gaze pattern, as all participants spent more time looking at the robotic pelvic area than at the human one, with more visual attention paid to the machine-like robots than to the human-like robots. The results of the viewing times toward the head revealed that all participants had a stronger need to gain visual information about the human head in comparison to the robotic heads, underlining the importance of authenticity in terms of emotions and motivations that can only be decoded in humans. Moreover, the study showed that individuals more frequently switched their visual attention toward different body parts of the robots in comparison to the female stimuli, implying that non-human sexualized representations evoked a higher need for visual exploration.
Introduction
The statement “Mating is a human universal” (Buss and Schmitt, 1993) not only implies that almost every human being, due to hormonal events and sociocultural influences, starts to develop sexual interest in women or men during adolescence (Miller and Benson, 1999), but also emphasizes the importance of mating for reproduction and evolution. To enable optimally successful reproduction, humans have therefore developed strategies to effectively estimate a person’s mate quality by looking at information provided by the person’s body (Buss, 1999). Consequently, studying eye movement patterns when people are looking at a potential mate has become an important research area in the field of human mating behavior. Results of numerous eye-tracking studies with heterosexual men highlight the visual importance of the female head, the chest and the pelvic region, since these body parts provide information about a woman’s reproductive value (e.g., Nummenmaa et al., 2012).
While the shape of the female body has been of aesthetic interest for centuries, it now also serves as a paragon for robots. Robots are machines which are built for specific reasons, ranging from work tasks in which they act autonomously and without human contact (e.g., industrial robots or robots which inspect and defuse explosive devices) to fields of application in which robots are built to have physiological and psychological contact with humans (e.g., robots in healthcare; Dautenhahn, 2007). In line with technological developments that are shaped to fulfill sexual needs (Allen, 2000) for example internet applications, VR technology), there have also been first attempts to develop robots that engage in intimate interactions with users. Companies (such as Abyss Creations/Realbotix) are currently developing human-like robots that are made to fulfill sexual needs by equipping hyper-realistic sex dolls with motors for movement and with a database providing the possibility to interact verbally. In his seminal book, David Levy (2008) predicted that by 2050, people will not only have sex with robots on a regular basis, but will also have relationships with and even marry robots. Levy highlighted that a prerequisite for these developments is that robots are “like us” with regard to their behavior and appearance.
This raises the question of whether people will use the same deep-rooted evolutionary psychological mechanisms of mating with a robotic replication of a human being, or whether mating with a robot will lead to new forms of information processing. As processes of visual attention have been shown to be influenced by the way people perceive a potential partner (e.g., Buss, 1999; Nummenmaa et al., 2012; see section “Visual Information on the Female Body and Its Perception” for details), we aimed to empirically investigate processes of visual attention to women and to female-looking. robots. According to evolutionary psychological approaches, it would be useless to process the human body and the mechanical body in the same way, because a mechanical body does not provide any authentic information about health, age, motivation, emotion, and consequently reproductive value (see section “Visual Information on the Female Body and Its Perception” for details). However, given that the mechanisms of mating are deeply rooted in humans (Buss, 1999), it is conceivable that the female-looking shape of the robotic female body is sufficient to trigger unconscious processes of visual attention that are similar to the way men look at women.
Based on these considerations, the present study asks whether heterosexual men apply the same gaze behavior toward female-looking robots as toward women. The implicit measurement of eye tracking enables unbiased insights into the visual attention toward women and sexualized robots, as it is not influenced by social desirability, which is particularly important given that the theme of sex robots might lead to biased reactions. Garza et al. (2016), who themselves conducted an eye-tracking study on the perception of the female body, highlight why eye tracking is useful in this research area by stating that “Eye movements provide a ‘true’ measure because they reflect ongoing mental processes in real time, whereas ratings are typically ‘post hoc’ processes that rely more on problem solving strategies” (p. 14). Moreover, we are interested in whether the robots’ appearance, in terms of how human-like or machine-like they look, influences gaze patterns. Additionally, we examined whether this would influence people’s visual attention insofar as unusual aspects would lead to more detailed exploration. As sexual interactions with inanimate objects like robots deviate from sexual norms (Abramson and Pinkerton, 1995; Worthen, 2016), responses to explicit measurements are likely to be influenced by social desirability and reflections on societal and sexual norm adherence. This problem can be avoided by using eye tracking to measure eye movements, as studies have found that eye movements quantify visual attention without an influence of social desirability. For instance, an empirical study by Fromberger et al. (2012) indicated that it is possible to determine a person’s sexual orientation based on gaze pattern, which in the case of explicit measurements may also be influenced by processes of social desirability. The present study therefore aims to contribute unbiased empirical data regarding men’s initial reactions to robotic replications of women. To further scrutinize whether evolutionary aspects play a role, in the sense that gaze patterns are caused by the unconscious intention to check for mate value, we included heterosexual women and homosexual men as control groups. Furthermore, we assessed different personality traits as well as participants’ evaluations of the robots (including ratings of attractiveness) in order to examine their potential explanatory power regarding the amount of time participants spend looking at different body regions of the robots. Overall, the present study aims to provide further insights into how sexualized robots are perceived in contrast to women. As such, the work contribute to the discussion on sexualized robots, which has so far primarily been based on the work of scholars who discuss normative questions (Levy, 2008; Richardson, 2016).
Abstract: Based on evolutionary psychological theories, numerous eye-tracking studies have demonstrated how people visually perceive a potential mate in order to efficiently estimate the person’s mate value. Companies are currently working on sexualized robots that provide numerous human-like visual cues which foster the visual resemblance to humans. To gain more elaborated knowledge on how people react to sexualized robots compared with humans, the present study empirically investigated whether heterosexual males transfer deep-rooted evolutionary psychological processes of mate perception to human-like and machine-like sexualized robots. Moreover, we aimed to learn more about the processes of orienting responses toward human and non-human stimuli and about potential predictors of visual attention to robots. Therefore, we conducted an eye-tracking study in which 15 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 18 heterosexual women were confronted with stimuli showing women, human-like gynoid robots and machine-like gynoid robots. For the sample as a whole, there was no difference in the amount of time spent looking at the human and non-human breasts. However, the results for the heterosexual males supported the assumption that human breasts attract more visual attention than do the breast areas of human-like and machine-like robots. The pelvic region yielded an unexpected gaze pattern, as all participants spent more time looking at the robotic pelvic area than at the human one, with more visual attention paid to the machine-like robots than to the human-like robots. The results of the viewing times toward the head revealed that all participants had a stronger need to gain visual information about the human head in comparison to the robotic heads, underlining the importance of authenticity in terms of emotions and motivations that can only be decoded in humans. Moreover, the study showed that individuals more frequently switched their visual attention toward different body parts of the robots in comparison to the female stimuli, implying that non-human sexualized representations evoked a higher need for visual exploration.
Introduction
The statement “Mating is a human universal” (Buss and Schmitt, 1993) not only implies that almost every human being, due to hormonal events and sociocultural influences, starts to develop sexual interest in women or men during adolescence (Miller and Benson, 1999), but also emphasizes the importance of mating for reproduction and evolution. To enable optimally successful reproduction, humans have therefore developed strategies to effectively estimate a person’s mate quality by looking at information provided by the person’s body (Buss, 1999). Consequently, studying eye movement patterns when people are looking at a potential mate has become an important research area in the field of human mating behavior. Results of numerous eye-tracking studies with heterosexual men highlight the visual importance of the female head, the chest and the pelvic region, since these body parts provide information about a woman’s reproductive value (e.g., Nummenmaa et al., 2012).
While the shape of the female body has been of aesthetic interest for centuries, it now also serves as a paragon for robots. Robots are machines which are built for specific reasons, ranging from work tasks in which they act autonomously and without human contact (e.g., industrial robots or robots which inspect and defuse explosive devices) to fields of application in which robots are built to have physiological and psychological contact with humans (e.g., robots in healthcare; Dautenhahn, 2007). In line with technological developments that are shaped to fulfill sexual needs (Allen, 2000) for example internet applications, VR technology), there have also been first attempts to develop robots that engage in intimate interactions with users. Companies (such as Abyss Creations/Realbotix) are currently developing human-like robots that are made to fulfill sexual needs by equipping hyper-realistic sex dolls with motors for movement and with a database providing the possibility to interact verbally. In his seminal book, David Levy (2008) predicted that by 2050, people will not only have sex with robots on a regular basis, but will also have relationships with and even marry robots. Levy highlighted that a prerequisite for these developments is that robots are “like us” with regard to their behavior and appearance.
This raises the question of whether people will use the same deep-rooted evolutionary psychological mechanisms of mating with a robotic replication of a human being, or whether mating with a robot will lead to new forms of information processing. As processes of visual attention have been shown to be influenced by the way people perceive a potential partner (e.g., Buss, 1999; Nummenmaa et al., 2012; see section “Visual Information on the Female Body and Its Perception” for details), we aimed to empirically investigate processes of visual attention to women and to female-looking. robots. According to evolutionary psychological approaches, it would be useless to process the human body and the mechanical body in the same way, because a mechanical body does not provide any authentic information about health, age, motivation, emotion, and consequently reproductive value (see section “Visual Information on the Female Body and Its Perception” for details). However, given that the mechanisms of mating are deeply rooted in humans (Buss, 1999), it is conceivable that the female-looking shape of the robotic female body is sufficient to trigger unconscious processes of visual attention that are similar to the way men look at women.
Based on these considerations, the present study asks whether heterosexual men apply the same gaze behavior toward female-looking robots as toward women. The implicit measurement of eye tracking enables unbiased insights into the visual attention toward women and sexualized robots, as it is not influenced by social desirability, which is particularly important given that the theme of sex robots might lead to biased reactions. Garza et al. (2016), who themselves conducted an eye-tracking study on the perception of the female body, highlight why eye tracking is useful in this research area by stating that “Eye movements provide a ‘true’ measure because they reflect ongoing mental processes in real time, whereas ratings are typically ‘post hoc’ processes that rely more on problem solving strategies” (p. 14). Moreover, we are interested in whether the robots’ appearance, in terms of how human-like or machine-like they look, influences gaze patterns. Additionally, we examined whether this would influence people’s visual attention insofar as unusual aspects would lead to more detailed exploration. As sexual interactions with inanimate objects like robots deviate from sexual norms (Abramson and Pinkerton, 1995; Worthen, 2016), responses to explicit measurements are likely to be influenced by social desirability and reflections on societal and sexual norm adherence. This problem can be avoided by using eye tracking to measure eye movements, as studies have found that eye movements quantify visual attention without an influence of social desirability. For instance, an empirical study by Fromberger et al. (2012) indicated that it is possible to determine a person’s sexual orientation based on gaze pattern, which in the case of explicit measurements may also be influenced by processes of social desirability. The present study therefore aims to contribute unbiased empirical data regarding men’s initial reactions to robotic replications of women. To further scrutinize whether evolutionary aspects play a role, in the sense that gaze patterns are caused by the unconscious intention to check for mate value, we included heterosexual women and homosexual men as control groups. Furthermore, we assessed different personality traits as well as participants’ evaluations of the robots (including ratings of attractiveness) in order to examine their potential explanatory power regarding the amount of time participants spend looking at different body regions of the robots. Overall, the present study aims to provide further insights into how sexualized robots are perceived in contrast to women. As such, the work contribute to the discussion on sexualized robots, which has so far primarily been based on the work of scholars who discuss normative questions (Levy, 2008; Richardson, 2016).
Great apes have an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources that they share with humans; this extends beyond distaste to resemble a muted form of disgust, long thought to be unique to humans
The Animal Origins of Disgust Reports of Basic Disgust in Nonhuman Great Apes. April 2019. Trevor I. Case, Richard J Stevenson, Richard W Byrne, Catherine Hobaiter. Pre-print, DOI: 10.1037/ebs0000175
Abstract: Intrinsic to an evolved disease avoidance account of disgust is Darwin’s assumption of continuity between the emotional lives of humans and animals. However, beyond the case of avoiding stimuli that taste bad, there has been little exploration of the existence of basic disgust elicitors in animals. Moreover, one influential perspective holds that disgust is unique to humans-a preadaptation of distaste that expands through culture to include a wide range of elicitors (e.g., Rozin, 2015). The present study represents a broad-scope investigation into disgust-like responses that might be present in nonhuman great ape species. A survey of aversions, contamination reactions, and signs of disgust in nonhuman great apes (principally chimpanzees) was collected from 74 great ape researchers, fieldworkers, and keepers. Overall, the results suggest that nonhuman great apes share with humans an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources, which extends beyond distaste to resemble human disgust. However, in nonhuman great apes, this aversion is muted. Candidates for this difference between humans and other great apes are considered, including frequent exposure to basic disgust elicitors in nonhuman great apes and increased dependence on meat-eating in hominin ancestry. We suggest that differences in disgust–like behavior between humans and nonhuman great apes reflect the specific ecological standpoint of the animal and that rather than being unique to humans, disgust is a continuation of the armoury of disease avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals.
Public significance statement: A systematic survey of great ape experts suggests that nonhuman great apes have an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources that they share with humans. This extends beyond distaste to resemble a muted form of disgust. Long thought to be unique to humans, disgust is likely a continuation of the armoury of disease avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals.
Keywords: Pathogen, Primate, Disease avoidance, Evolution, Aversions
Abstract: Intrinsic to an evolved disease avoidance account of disgust is Darwin’s assumption of continuity between the emotional lives of humans and animals. However, beyond the case of avoiding stimuli that taste bad, there has been little exploration of the existence of basic disgust elicitors in animals. Moreover, one influential perspective holds that disgust is unique to humans-a preadaptation of distaste that expands through culture to include a wide range of elicitors (e.g., Rozin, 2015). The present study represents a broad-scope investigation into disgust-like responses that might be present in nonhuman great ape species. A survey of aversions, contamination reactions, and signs of disgust in nonhuman great apes (principally chimpanzees) was collected from 74 great ape researchers, fieldworkers, and keepers. Overall, the results suggest that nonhuman great apes share with humans an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources, which extends beyond distaste to resemble human disgust. However, in nonhuman great apes, this aversion is muted. Candidates for this difference between humans and other great apes are considered, including frequent exposure to basic disgust elicitors in nonhuman great apes and increased dependence on meat-eating in hominin ancestry. We suggest that differences in disgust–like behavior between humans and nonhuman great apes reflect the specific ecological standpoint of the animal and that rather than being unique to humans, disgust is a continuation of the armoury of disease avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals.
Public significance statement: A systematic survey of great ape experts suggests that nonhuman great apes have an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources that they share with humans. This extends beyond distaste to resemble a muted form of disgust. Long thought to be unique to humans, disgust is likely a continuation of the armoury of disease avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals.
Keywords: Pathogen, Primate, Disease avoidance, Evolution, Aversions
Friday, May 10, 2019
Interest rate caps are widespread in credit markets; in Chile a 20pct lowering reduced the number of loans by 19%; consumer surplus decreased by 3.5% of average income (larger losses for risky borrowers)
Price Regulation in Credit Markets: A Trade-off between Consumer Protection and Credit Access. Jose I. Cuesta, Alberto Sepulveda. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_toHlf2fvvtckCSrSi-zmnsexNGcDqrK/view
Abstract: Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on its effects on market outcomes and welfare. Conceptually, the effects of interest rate caps are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection from banks’ market power and reductions in credit access. We exploit a policy in Chile that lowered interest rate caps by 20 percentage points to understand its impacts. Using comprehensive individual-level administrative data, we document that the policy decreased transacted interest rates by 9%, but also reduced the number of loans by 19%. To estimate the welfare effects of this policy, we develop and estimate a model of loan applications, pricing, and repayment of loans. Consumer surplus decreases by an equivalent of 3.5% of average income, with larger losses for risky borrowers. Survey evidence suggests these welfare effects may be driven by decreased consumption smoothing and increased financial distress. Interest rate caps provide greater consumer protection in more concentrated markets, but welfare effects are negative even under a monopoly. Risk-based regulation reduces the adverse effects of interest rate caps, but does not eliminate them.
Abstract: Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on its effects on market outcomes and welfare. Conceptually, the effects of interest rate caps are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection from banks’ market power and reductions in credit access. We exploit a policy in Chile that lowered interest rate caps by 20 percentage points to understand its impacts. Using comprehensive individual-level administrative data, we document that the policy decreased transacted interest rates by 9%, but also reduced the number of loans by 19%. To estimate the welfare effects of this policy, we develop and estimate a model of loan applications, pricing, and repayment of loans. Consumer surplus decreases by an equivalent of 3.5% of average income, with larger losses for risky borrowers. Survey evidence suggests these welfare effects may be driven by decreased consumption smoothing and increased financial distress. Interest rate caps provide greater consumer protection in more concentrated markets, but welfare effects are negative even under a monopoly. Risk-based regulation reduces the adverse effects of interest rate caps, but does not eliminate them.
The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Encounters with eudaimonic memes, remembered topics, emotional and motivational effects with a focus on gender differences
The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Themes and affective user responses to meaningful memes in social media. Diana Rieger, Christoph Klimmt. New Media & Society, April 17, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819842875
Abstract: Recent work on eudaimonic media entertainment has demonstrated that not only movies carry meaningful or inspiring topics but also content that is usually uploaded online, such as YouTube videos or memes in social media. Although past research found beneficial effects of eudaimonic movies for psychosocial well-being and motivational intentions, the daily audience of eudaimonic online fare has not been investigated yet. This article reports first findings from a survey (N = 2777), representative of German Internet users. Specifically, it addresses the question of (daily) encounters with eudaimonic memes, remembered topics, emotional and motivational effects with a focus on gender differences. The results reveal that many social media users consume “small doses” of eudaimonic content on a regular basis and experience similar, yet weaker, emotional consequences of such exposure. These findings are discussed in light of eudaimonic entertainment and positive media psychology.
Keywords: Entertainment, eudaimonia, inspiration, memes, positive media psychology, social media
Abstract: Recent work on eudaimonic media entertainment has demonstrated that not only movies carry meaningful or inspiring topics but also content that is usually uploaded online, such as YouTube videos or memes in social media. Although past research found beneficial effects of eudaimonic movies for psychosocial well-being and motivational intentions, the daily audience of eudaimonic online fare has not been investigated yet. This article reports first findings from a survey (N = 2777), representative of German Internet users. Specifically, it addresses the question of (daily) encounters with eudaimonic memes, remembered topics, emotional and motivational effects with a focus on gender differences. The results reveal that many social media users consume “small doses” of eudaimonic content on a regular basis and experience similar, yet weaker, emotional consequences of such exposure. These findings are discussed in light of eudaimonic entertainment and positive media psychology.
Keywords: Entertainment, eudaimonia, inspiration, memes, positive media psychology, social media
Left-wingers are more skeptical & averse towards the very rich, which causes them to take the risk of punishing an honest high earner; although cheating is against the rules, rightists seem to want to review every case individually
Suspicious Success — Cheating, Inequality Acceptance, and Political Preferences. Felix Klimm. European Economic Review, May 10 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.04.008
Abstract: Supporters of left-wing parties typically place more emphasis on redistributive policies than right-wing voters. I investigate whether this difference in tolerating inequality is affected by suspicious success — achievements that may arise from cheating. Using a laboratory experiment, I exogenously vary cheating opportunities for stakeholders who work on a real effort task and earn money according to their self-reported performances. An impartial spectator is able to redistribute the earnings between the stakeholders, although it is not possible to detect cheating. I find that the opportunity to cheat leads to different views on whether to accept inequality. Left-wing spectators substantially reduce inequality when cheating is possible, while the treatment has no significant effect on choices of right-wing spectators. Since neither differences in beliefs nor differences in norms about cheating can explain this finding, it seems to be driven by a difference in redistributive preferences. These results suggest that views on redistribution will diverge even more once public awareness increases that inequality may be to a certain extent created by cheating.
---
My results complement the literature in several dimensions. First, in line with the literature on dishonesty (e.g., Abeler et al., forthcoming), I find that some subjects are cheating but not all of them to the full extent. Second, supporting the findings of Cappelen et al. (2016), the results of the Monitor treatment show that left-wing and right-wing supporters do not differ in their redistributive preferences when the sources of inequality are certain. Third, whereas Bortolotti et al. (2017) investigate a different experimental setupthanIdo(e.g.,cheating in the luck domain instead of performance cheating), they also document that suspicious success affects what people consider to be a fair distribution. In addition, subjects with different fairness views exhibit the same beliefs about cheating in their experiment. This is in line with my finding that cheating beliefs do not differ across political preferences.
One might think of several explanations for why left-wing spectators take a higher risk of redistributing away from an honest stakeholder than right-wing spectators. For instance, left-wingers might be more skeptical and averse towards the very rich in general, which causes them to take the risk of punishing an honest high earner. Alternatively, right-wingers typically put more emphasis on the rule of law than left-wingers and could therefore be more reluctant to judge somebody without having proof.24 Even though cheating is against the rules, right-wingers seem to want to review every case individually.
Abstract: Supporters of left-wing parties typically place more emphasis on redistributive policies than right-wing voters. I investigate whether this difference in tolerating inequality is affected by suspicious success — achievements that may arise from cheating. Using a laboratory experiment, I exogenously vary cheating opportunities for stakeholders who work on a real effort task and earn money according to their self-reported performances. An impartial spectator is able to redistribute the earnings between the stakeholders, although it is not possible to detect cheating. I find that the opportunity to cheat leads to different views on whether to accept inequality. Left-wing spectators substantially reduce inequality when cheating is possible, while the treatment has no significant effect on choices of right-wing spectators. Since neither differences in beliefs nor differences in norms about cheating can explain this finding, it seems to be driven by a difference in redistributive preferences. These results suggest that views on redistribution will diverge even more once public awareness increases that inequality may be to a certain extent created by cheating.
---
My results complement the literature in several dimensions. First, in line with the literature on dishonesty (e.g., Abeler et al., forthcoming), I find that some subjects are cheating but not all of them to the full extent. Second, supporting the findings of Cappelen et al. (2016), the results of the Monitor treatment show that left-wing and right-wing supporters do not differ in their redistributive preferences when the sources of inequality are certain. Third, whereas Bortolotti et al. (2017) investigate a different experimental setupthanIdo(e.g.,cheating in the luck domain instead of performance cheating), they also document that suspicious success affects what people consider to be a fair distribution. In addition, subjects with different fairness views exhibit the same beliefs about cheating in their experiment. This is in line with my finding that cheating beliefs do not differ across political preferences.
One might think of several explanations for why left-wing spectators take a higher risk of redistributing away from an honest stakeholder than right-wing spectators. For instance, left-wingers might be more skeptical and averse towards the very rich in general, which causes them to take the risk of punishing an honest high earner. Alternatively, right-wingers typically put more emphasis on the rule of law than left-wingers and could therefore be more reluctant to judge somebody without having proof.24 Even though cheating is against the rules, right-wingers seem to want to review every case individually.
Revolutionaries in societies that used 1/4 as much energy as we do thought communism right around the corner; let's get the abundance that matters (everyone be free to pursue learning, play, sport, amusement, companionship, & travel)
We cannot legislate and spend our way out of catastrophic global warming. Jasper Bernes. Commune, Spring 2019. https://communemag.com/between-the-devil-and-the-green-new-deal/
Check also Not only is animal-source food wrong, plant-source food is wrong too... Let's transition to house flies, funghi, mealworm beetles and algae:
Tzachor, A., Richards, C.E. & Holt, L. Future foods for risk-resilient diets. Nat Food (2021). May 13 2021. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/05/not-only-is-animal-source-food-wrong.html
From space, the Bayan Obo mine in China, where 70 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals are extracted and refined, almost looks like a painting. The paisleys of the radioactive tailings ponds, miles long, concentrate the hidden colors of the earth: mineral aquamarines and ochres of the sort a painter might employ to flatter the rulers of a dying empire.
To meet the demands of the Green New Deal, which proposes to convert the US economy to zero emissions, renewable power by 2030, there will be a lot more of these mines gouged into the crust of the earth. That’s because nearly every renewable energy source depends upon non-renewable and frequently hard-to-access minerals: solar panels use indium, turbines use neodymium, batteries use lithium, and all require kilotons of steel, tin, silver, and copper. The renewable-energy supply chain is a complicated hopscotch around the periodic table and around the world. To make a high-capacity solar panel, one might need copper (atomic number 29) from Chile, indium (49) from Australia, gallium (31) from China, and selenium (34) from Germany. Many of the most efficient, direct-drive wind turbines require a couple pounds of the rare-earth metal neodymium, and there’s 140 pounds of lithium in each Tesla.
[...]
It’s not clear we can even get enough of this stuff out of the ground, however, given the timeframe. Zero-emissions 2030 would mean mines producing now, not in five or ten years. The race to bring new supply online is likely to be ugly, in more ways than one, as slipshod producers scramble to cash in on the price bonanza, cutting every corner and setting up mines that are dangerous, unhealthy, and not particularly green. Mines require a massive outlay of investment up front, and they typically feature low return on investment, except during the sort of commodity boom we can expect a Green New Deal to produce. It can be a decade or more before the sources are developed, and another decade before they turn a profit.
Nor is it clear how much the fruits of these mines will help us decarbonize, if energy use keeps climbing. Just because a United States encrusted in solar panels releases no greenhouse gases, that doesn’t mean its technologies are carbon neutral. It takes energy to get those minerals out of the ground, energy to shape them into batteries and photovoltaic solar panels and giant rotors for windmills, energy to dispose of them when they wear out. Mines are worked, primarily, by gas-burning vehicles. The container ships that cross the world’s seas bearing the good freight of renewables burn so much fuel they are responsible for 3 percent of planetary emissions. Electric, plug-in motors for construction equipment and container ships are barely in the prototype stage. And what kind of massive battery would you need to get a container ship across the Pacific? Maybe a small nuclear reactor would be best?
Counting emissions within national boundaries, in other words, is like counting calories but only during breakfast and lunch. If going clean in the US makes other places more dirty, then you’ve got to add that to the ledger. The carbon sums are sure to be lower than they would be otherwise, but the reductions might not be as robust as thought, especially if producers desperate to cash in on the renewable jackpot do things as cheaply and quickly as possible, which for now means fossil fuels. On the other side, environmental remediation is costly in every way. Want to clean up those tailings ponds, bury the waste deep underground, keep the water table from being poisoned? You’re going to need motors and you’re probably going to burn oil.
Consolidating scientific opinion, the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projects that biofuels are going to be used in these cases—for construction, for industry, and for transport, wherever motors can’t be easily electrified. Biofuels put carbon into the air, but it’s carbon that was already absorbed by growing plants, so the net emissions are zero. The problem is that growing biofuels requires land otherwise devoted to crops, or carbon-absorbing wilderness. They are among the least dense of power sources. You would need a dozen acres to fill the tank of a single intercontinental jet. Emissions are only the most prominent aspect of a broader ecological crisis. Human habitation, pasture and industry, branching through the remaining wilderness in the most profligate and destructive manner, has sent shockwaves through the plant and animal kingdoms. The mass die-off of insects, with populations decreasing by four-fifths in some areas, is one part of this. The insect world is very poorly understood, but scientists suspect these die-offs and extinction events are only partially attributable to climate change, with human land use and pesticides a major culprit. Of the two billion tons of animal mass on the planet, insects account for half. Pull the pillars of the insect world away, and the food chains collapse.
To replace current US energy consumption with renewables, you’d need to devote at least 25-50 percent of the US landmass to solar, wind, and biofuels, according to the estimates made by Vaclav Smil, the grand doyen of energy studies. Is there room for that and expanding human habitation? For that and pasture for a massive meat and dairy industry? For that and the forest we’d need to take carbon out of the air? Not if capitalism keeps doing the thing which it can’t not keep doing—grow. The law of capitalism is the law of more—more energy, more stuff, more materials. It introduces efficiencies only to more effectively despoil the planet. There is no solution to the climate crisis which leaves capitalism’s compulsions to growth intact. And this is what the Green New Deal, a term coined by that oily neoliberal, Thomas Friedman, doesn’t address. It thinks you can keep capitalism, keep growth, but remove the deleterious consequences. The death villages are here to tell you that you can’t. No roses will bloom on that bush.
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Miners in Chile, China, and Zambia will be digging in the earth for more than just the makings of fifty million solar panels and windmills, however, since the Green New Deal also proposes to rebuild the power grid in a more efficient form, to upgrade all buildings to the highest environmental standards, and lastly, to develop a low-carbon transportation infrastructure, based on electric vehicles and high-speed rail. This would involve, needless to say, a monumental deployment of carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel. Trillions of dollars of raw materials would need to flow into the United States to be shaped into train tracks and electric cars. Schools and hospitals, too, since alongside these green initiatives, the GND proposes universal health care and free education, not to mention a living-wage jobs guarantee.
Nothing new in politics is ever truly and completely new, and so it’s as unsurprising that the Green New Deal hearkens back to the 1930s as it is that France’s gilet jaunes revive the corpse of the French Revolution and make it dance a jig below the Arc de Triomphe. We understand the present and future through the past. As Marx notes in The Eighteenth Brumaire, people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” In order to make new forms of class struggle intelligible, their partisans look to the past, “borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.” The “new” of the Green New Deal must therefore express itself in language decidedly old, appealing to great-grandpa’s vanished workerism and the graphic style of WPA posters.
This costume-play can be progressive rather than regressive, insofar as it consists of “glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in the imagination, not recoiling from its solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not making its ghost walk again.” [...]
We would do well to keep these words in mind over the next decades, to avoid recoiling from real solutions and insisting on fantastic ones. The project of the Green New Deal is really nothing like the New Deal of the 1930s, except in the most superficial ways. The New Deal was a response to an immediate economic emergency, the Great Depression, and not a future climate catastrophe: its main goal was to restore growth to an economy that had shrunk by 50 percent and in which one out of every four people was unemployed. The goal of the New Deal was to get capitalism to do what it already wanted to do: put people to work, exploit them, and then sell them the products of their own labor. The state was necessary as a catalyst and a mediator, setting the right balance between profit and wages, chiefly by strengthening the hand of labor and weakening that of business. Aside from the fact that it involves capital outlays that are much larger, the Green New Deal has a more difficult ambition: rather than get capitalism to do what it wants to do, it has to get it to pursue a path that is certainly bad for the owners of capital in the long run.
Whereas the New Deal needed only to restore growth, the Green New Deal has to generate growth and reduce emissions. The problem is that growth and emissions are, by almost every measure, profoundly correlated. The Green New Deal thus risks becoming a sort of Sisyphean reform, rolling the rock of emissions reductions up the hill each day only to have a growing, energy-hungry economy knock it back down to the bottom each night.
Advocates of green growth promise an “absolute decoupling” of emissions and growth, where each additional unit of energy adds no CO2 to the atmosphere. Even if such a thing were technologically possible, even if it were possible to generate zero- or low-emissions energy not only adequate to but in excess of current demand, such decoupling would require far greater power over the behavior of capitalists than the New Deal ever mustered.
FDR and his coalition in Congress exerted modest control over corporations through a process of “countervailing power,” in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, tilting the playing field to disempower capitalists relative to workers and consumers, and making new investment more appealing. The state did undertake direct investment—building roads, bridges, power stations, parks, and museums—but did so not in order to supplant private investment but to create “forever a yardstick against extortion,” in FDR’s high-toned phrasing. Government power plants would, for example, disclose the true (lower) price of electricity, barring energy monopolies from price gouging.
Green New Dealers flag this aspect of the New Deal, since it’s ostensibly so close to what they propose. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a public power company still in operation eighty years later, is the most famous of these projects. Public infrastructure, clean energy, economic development—the TVA brought together many of the elements essential to the Green New Deal. Building dams and hydroelectric power stations along the Tennessee River, it provided clean, cheap electricity to one of the most economically depressed regions of the country. The hydroelectric plants were, in turn, linked up to factories producing nitrates, an energy-intensive raw material needed for both fertilizer and explosives. Wages and crop yields rose, power costs fell. The TVA brought cheap energy, cheap fertilizer, and good jobs to a place previous known for malaria, poor soil quality, incomes less than half the national average, and alarmingly high unemployment.
The problem with this scenario as a framework for the Green New Deal is that renewables are not massively cheaper than fossil fuels. The state cannot blaze the trail to cheap, renewable energy, satisfying consumers with lower costs and producers with acceptable profits. Many once thought that the depletion of oil and coal reserves would save us, raising the price of fossil fuels above that of renewables and forcing the switch as a matter of economic necessity. Unfortunately, that messianic price point has drifted farther into the future as new drilling technologies, introduced in the last decade, have made it possible to frack oil from shale and to recover reserves from fields previously thought exhausted. The price of oil has stayed stubbornly low, and the US is, suddenly, producing more of it than anyone else. The doomsday scenarios of “peak oil” are now a turn-of-the-millennium curiosity, like Y2K or Al Gore. Sorry, wrong apocalypse.
Some will tell you that renewables can compete with fossil fuels on the open market. Wind and hydroelectric and geothermal have, it’s true, become cheaper as sources of electricity, in some cases cheaper than coal and natural gas. But they’re still not cheap enough. That’s because, in order to bankrupt the fossil capitalists, renewables will need to do more than edge out fossil fuels by a penny or two per kilowatt-hour. There are trillions of dollars sunk into fossil energy infrastructure and the owners of those investments will invariably choose to recoup some of that investment rather than none of it. To send the value of those assets to zero and force energy capitalists to invest in new factories, renewables need to be not only cheaper but massively cheaper, impossibly cheaper. At least this is the conclusion reached by a group of engineers Google convened to study the problem. Existing technologies are never going to be cheap enough to bankrupt coal-fired power plants: we’d need stuff that is currently science-fiction like cold fusion. This is not only because of the problem of sunk costs, but because electricity from solar and wind is not “dispatchable” on demand. It is only available when and where the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. If you want it on demand, you’re going to have to store it (or transport it thousands of miles) and that’s going to raise the price.
Most will tell you that the answer to this problem is taxation of dirty energy or an outright ban, alongside subsidy of the clean. A carbon tax, judiciously applied, can tip the scales in favor of renewables until they are able to beat fossil energy outright. New fossil sources and infrastructure can be prohibited and revenue from the taxes can be used to pay for research into new technology, efficiency improvements, and subsidies for consumers. But now one is talking about something other than a New Deal, blazing the way to a more highly productive capitalism in which profits and wages can rise together. There are 1.5 trillion barrels of proven oil reserves on the planet, according to some calculations—around $50 trillion worth if we assume a very low average cost per barrel of thirty-five dollars. This is value that oil companies have already accounted for in their mathematical imaginings. If carbon taxes or bans reduce that number tenfold, fossil capitalists will do everything they can to avoid, subvert, and repeal them. The problem of sunk costs again applies. If you slaughter the value of those reserves, you might, perversely, bring down the cost of fossil fuels, encouraging more consumption and more emissions, as oil producers scramble to sell their excess supply in countries without a carbon tax. For reference, there is about $300 trillion of total wealth on the planet, most of it in the hands of the owning class. The global Gross Domestic Product, the value of all the goods and services produced in a year, is around $80 trillion. If you propose to wipe out $50 trillion, one-sixth of the wealth on the planet, equal to two-thirds of global GDP, you should expect the owners of that wealth to fight you with everything they have, which is more or less everything.
[...]
If you tax oil, capital will sell it elsewhere. If you increase demand for raw materials, capital will bid up the prices of commodities, and rush materials to market in the most wasteful, energy-intensive way. If you require millions of square miles for solar panels, wind farms, and biofuel crops, capital will bid up the price of real estate. If you slap tariffs on necessary imports, capital will leave for better markets. If you try to set a maximum price that doesn’t allow profit, capital will simply stop investing. Lop off one head of the hydra, face another. Invest trillions of dollars into infrastructure in the US and you’ll have to confront the staggeringly wasteful, slow, and unproductive construction industry, where laying a mile of subway can be twenty times as expensive and take four times as long. You’ll have to confront the earthen monsters of Bechtel and Fluor Corp., habituated to feeding at the government trough and billing fifty dollar screws. If this doesn’t chasten you, consider the world-historical inefficiency of the US military, the planet’s biggest oil consumer and, unsurprisingly, also the planet’s main oil cop. The Pentagon is an accounting black hole, into which the wealth of the nation is ploughed and from which no light emerges. Its balance sheet is a blank.
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I suspect many advocates of the Green New Deal know all this. They don’t really think it will happen as promised, and they know that, if it does happen, it won’t work. This is probably why there’s so little concrete detail being offered. Discussion so far has largely revolved around the question of budgeting, with the advocates of Modern Monetary Theory arguing that there is no upper bound on government spending for a country like the US, and tax-and-spend leftists firing back with all sorts of counter-scenarios. The MMT advocates are technically correct, but they discount the power that owners of US debt have to determine the value of the dollar, and therefore prices and profits. Meanwhile, critics of the Green New Deal confine their discussion to the least problematic aspects. Don’t get me wrong, budget items on the order of tens of trillions of dollars are a big deal. But securing the bag is hardly the biggest problem. Implementation is where it really dies, and few advocates have much to say about such details.
The Green New Deal proposes to decarbonize most of the economy in ten years—great, but no one is talking about how. This is because, for many, its value is primarily rhetorical; it’s about shifting the discussion, gathering political will, and underscoring the urgency of the climate crisis. It’s more big mood more than grand plan. Many socialists will recognize that mitigation of climate change within a system of production for profit is impossible, but they think a project like the Green New Deal is what Leon Trotsky called a “transitional program,” hinged upon a “transitional demand.” Unlike the minimal demand, which capitalism can easily meet, and the maximal demand which it clearly can’t, the transitional demand is something that capitalism could potentially meet if it were a rational and humane system, but in actuality can’t. By agitating around this transitional demand, socialists expose capitalism as an extraordinarily wasteful and destructive coordinator of human activity, incapable of delivering on its own potential and, in this case, responsible for an unimaginable number of future deaths. So exposed, one might then safely proceed to do away with capitalism. Faced with the resistance of the capitalist class and an entrenched government bureaucracy, officials elected around a Green New Deal could safely, with the support of the masses, move to expropriate the capitalist class and reorganize the state along socialist lines. Or so the story goes.
I’ve always despised the transitional program concept. I think, for starters, that it’s condescending, presuming that the “masses” need to be told one thing in order, eventually, to be convinced of another. I also think it’s dangerous, with the potential to profoundly backfire. Revolutions do begin, often, where reforms fail. But the problem is that the transitional demand encourages you to build institutions and organizations around one set of goals with the hope that you can rapidly convert them to another when the time comes. But institutions are tremendously inertial structures. If you build a party and other institutions around the idea of solving climate change within capitalism, do not be surprised when some large fraction of that party resists your attempt to convert it into a revolutionary organ. The history of socialist and communist parties is reason for caution. Even after the Second International betrayed its members by sending them to slaughter each other in the First World War, and even after a huge fraction split to form revolutionary organizations in the wake of the Russian Revolution, many members of the party and its network of unions continued to support it, out of habit and because it had built a thick network of cultural and social structures to which they were bound by a million and one ties. Beware that, in pursuit of the transitional program, you do not build up the forces of your future enemy.
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Let’s instead say what we know to be true. The pathway to climate stabilization below two degrees Celsius offered by the Green New Deal is illusory. Indeed, at present the only solutions possible within the framework of capitalism are ghastly, risky forms of geo-engineering, chemically poisoning either the ocean or the sky to absorb carbon or limit sunlight, preserving capitalism and its host, humanity, at the cost of the sky (now weatherless) or the ocean (now lifeless). Unlike emissions reductions, such projects will not require international collaboration. Any country could begin geo-engineering right now. What’s to stop China or the US from deciding to dump sulfur into the sky, if things get hot enough and bad enough?
The problem with the Green New Deal is that it promises to change everything while keeping everything the same. It promises to switch out the energetic basis of modern society as if one were changing the battery in a car. You still buy a new iPhone every two years, but zero emissions. The world of the Green New Deal is this world but better—this world but with zero emissions, universal health care, and free college. The appeal is obvious but the combination impossible. We can’t remain in this world. To preserve the ecological niche in which we and our cohort of species have lived for the last eleven thousand years, we will have to completely reorganize society, changing where and how and most importantly why we live. Given current technology, there is no possibility to continue using more energy per person, more land per person, more more per person. This need not mean a gray world of grim austerity, though that’s what’s coming if inequality and dispossession continue. An emancipated society, in which no one can force another into work for reasons of property, could offer joy, meaning, freedom, satisfaction, and even a sort of abundance. We can easily have enough of what matters—conserving energy and other resources for food, shelter, and medicine. As is obvious to anyone who spends a good thirty seconds really looking, half of what surrounds us in capitalism is needless waste. Beyond our foundational needs, the most important abundance is an abundance of time, and time is, thankfully, carbon-zero, and even perhaps carbon-negative. If revolutionaries in societies that used one-fourth as much energy as we do thought communism right around the corner, then there’s no need to shackle ourselves to the gruesome imperatives of growth. A society in which everyone is free to pursue learning, play, sport, amusement, companionship, and travel, in this we see the abundance that matters.
Perhaps breakthrough decarbonizing or zero-emissions technologies are almost here. One would be a fool to discount the possibility. But waiting for lightning to strike is not a politics. It’s been almost seventy years since the last paradigm-shifting technology was invented—transistors, nuclear power, genomics, all date from the middle of the twentieth century. Illusions of perspective and the endless stream of apps notwithstanding, the pace of technological change has slowed rather than accelerated. In any case, if capitalism suddenly finds it within its means to mitigate climate change, we can shift to talking about one of the other ten reasons why we should end it.
We cannot keep things the same and change everything. We need a revolution, a break with capital and its killing compulsions, though what that looks like in the twenty-first century is very much an open question. A revolution that had as its aim the flourishing of all human life would certainly mean immediate decarbonization, a rapid decrease in energy use for those in the industrialized global north, no more cement, very little steel, almost no air travel, walkable human settlements, passive heating and cooling, a total transformation of agriculture, and a diminishment of animal pasture by an order of magnitude at least. All of this is possible, but not if we continue to shovel one half of all the wealth produced on the planet into the maw of capital, not if we continue to sacrifice some fraction of each generation by sending them into the pits, not if we continue to allow those whose only aim is profit to decide how we live.
Thursday, May 9, 2019
Landmark study by Côté S, House J, Willer R (2015) said that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality; not reproducible
No evidence that economic inequality moderates the effect of income on generosity. Stefan C. Schmukle, Martin Korndörfer, and Boris Egloff. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. April 29, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1807942116
Significance: Are the rich less generous than the poor? Results of studies on this topic have been inconsistent. Recent research that has received widespread academic and media attention has provided evidence that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality. However, in large representative datasets from the United States (study 1), Germany (study 2), and 30 countries (study 3), we did not find any evidence for such an effect. Instead, our results suggest that the rich are not less generous than the poor, even when economic inequality is large. This result has implications for contemporary debates on what increasing inequality in resource distributions means for modern societies.
Abstract: A landmark study published in PNAS [Côté S, House J, Willer R (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112:15838–15843] showed that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality. This finding might serve to reconcile inconsistent findings on the effect of social class on generosity by highlighting the moderating role of economic inequality. On the basis of the importance of replicating a major finding before readily accepting it as evidence, we analyzed the effect of the interaction between income and inequality on generosity in three large representative datasets. We analyzed the donating behavior of 27,714 US households (study 1), the generosity of 1,334 German individuals in an economic game (study 2), and volunteering to participate in charitable activities in 30,985 participants from 30 countries (study 3). We found no evidence for the postulated moderation effect in any study. This result is especially remarkable because (i) our samples were very large, leading to high power to detect effects that exist, and (ii) the cross-country analysis employed in study 3 led to much greater variability in economic inequality. These findings indicate that the moderation effect might be rather specific and cannot be easily generalized. Consequently, economic inequality might not be a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous results on the effect of social class on prosociality.
Keywords: social classincomeeconomic inequalityprosocial behaviorgenerosity
Significance: Are the rich less generous than the poor? Results of studies on this topic have been inconsistent. Recent research that has received widespread academic and media attention has provided evidence that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality. However, in large representative datasets from the United States (study 1), Germany (study 2), and 30 countries (study 3), we did not find any evidence for such an effect. Instead, our results suggest that the rich are not less generous than the poor, even when economic inequality is large. This result has implications for contemporary debates on what increasing inequality in resource distributions means for modern societies.
Abstract: A landmark study published in PNAS [Côté S, House J, Willer R (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112:15838–15843] showed that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality. This finding might serve to reconcile inconsistent findings on the effect of social class on generosity by highlighting the moderating role of economic inequality. On the basis of the importance of replicating a major finding before readily accepting it as evidence, we analyzed the effect of the interaction between income and inequality on generosity in three large representative datasets. We analyzed the donating behavior of 27,714 US households (study 1), the generosity of 1,334 German individuals in an economic game (study 2), and volunteering to participate in charitable activities in 30,985 participants from 30 countries (study 3). We found no evidence for the postulated moderation effect in any study. This result is especially remarkable because (i) our samples were very large, leading to high power to detect effects that exist, and (ii) the cross-country analysis employed in study 3 led to much greater variability in economic inequality. These findings indicate that the moderation effect might be rather specific and cannot be easily generalized. Consequently, economic inequality might not be a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous results on the effect of social class on prosociality.
Keywords: social classincomeeconomic inequalityprosocial behaviorgenerosity
Not all instances of gender inequality are equally concerning: An emphasis on women's underrepresentation in STEM has not been matched by a similar concern about men's underrepresentation in Healthcare, Early Education, etc
Do people care if men don't care about caring? The asymmetry in support for changing gender roles. Katharina Block et al. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 83, July 2019, Pages 112-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.03.013
Highlights
• Gender imbalances are perceived differently for male- vs. female-dominant careers.
• Stronger support for social change when women (vs. men) are underrepresented.
• External barriers are thought to constrain gender balance in male-dominated jobs.
• Motivation is thought to constrain gender balance in female-dominated jobs.
• Asymmetrical support for change is predicted by gender distribution, not salary.
Abstract: Not all instances of gender inequality are equally concerning. An emphasis on women's underrepresentation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math roles (STEM) has not been matched by a similar concern about men's underrepresentation in Healthcare, Early Education, and Domestic roles (HEED). The current research investigates whether and why people perceive gender imbalances in male-dominated careers (STEM and leadership) as more problematic than gender imbalances in female-dominated, caregiving careers (HEED). Results from four studies (total N = 754) document a tendency to more strongly support the inclusion of women in male-dominated careers, compared to the inclusion of men in female-dominated careers. This asymmetry in support for social action towards change is predicted by beliefs about what the ideal gender representation should be and the perceived causes of gender imbalances in each career type. Notably, gender representation in careers (and not salary) is the key factor underlying discrepant support for change (Study 4).
Highlights
• Gender imbalances are perceived differently for male- vs. female-dominant careers.
• Stronger support for social change when women (vs. men) are underrepresented.
• External barriers are thought to constrain gender balance in male-dominated jobs.
• Motivation is thought to constrain gender balance in female-dominated jobs.
• Asymmetrical support for change is predicted by gender distribution, not salary.
Abstract: Not all instances of gender inequality are equally concerning. An emphasis on women's underrepresentation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math roles (STEM) has not been matched by a similar concern about men's underrepresentation in Healthcare, Early Education, and Domestic roles (HEED). The current research investigates whether and why people perceive gender imbalances in male-dominated careers (STEM and leadership) as more problematic than gender imbalances in female-dominated, caregiving careers (HEED). Results from four studies (total N = 754) document a tendency to more strongly support the inclusion of women in male-dominated careers, compared to the inclusion of men in female-dominated careers. This asymmetry in support for social action towards change is predicted by beliefs about what the ideal gender representation should be and the perceived causes of gender imbalances in each career type. Notably, gender representation in careers (and not salary) is the key factor underlying discrepant support for change (Study 4).
Less problems for baby in spring birth causes an average marginal willingness to pay for a spring birth to be $877; this implies a willingness to trade‐off 560 grams of birth weight to get a spring birth
The Demand for Season of Birth. Damian Clarke, Sonia Oreffice. Climent Quintana‐Domeque. Journal of Applied Econometrics, May 2 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.2711
Summary: We study the determinants of season of birth for married women aged 20‐45 in the US, using birth certificate and Census data. We also elicit the willingness to pay for season of birth through discrete choice experiments implemented on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. We document that the probability of a spring first birth is significantly related to mother's age, education, race, ethnicity, smoking status during pregnancy, receiving WIC food benefits during pregnancy, pre‐pregnancy obesity and the mother working in “education, training, and library” occupations, whereas among unmarried women without a father acknowledged on their child's birth certificate, all our findings are muted. A summer first birth does not depend on socioeconomic characteristics, although it is the most common birth season in the US. Among married women aged 20‐45, we estimate the average marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for a spring birth to be 877 USD. This implies a willingness to trade‐off 560 grams of birth weight to achieve a spring birth. Finally, we estimate that an increase of 1,000 USD in the predicted marginal WTP for a spring birth is associated with a 15 pp increase in the probability of obtaining an actual spring birth.
Keywords: quarter of birth, fertility timing, willingness to pay, discrete choice experiments.
1 Introduction
While the relevance of season of birth has been acknowledged at least since Huntington’s 1938 book “Season of Birth: Its Relation to Human Abilities”, it was not until recently that season of birth became prominent in biology, economics and social sciences more generally.There is now a well-established literature illustrating a variety of aspects that are significantly correlated with season of birth, including birth weight, education, earnings, height, life expectancy, schizophrenia, etc. Although understanding the channels through which season of birth affects these outcomes still represents a scientific challenge, in the US winter months are associated with lower birth weight, education, and earnings, while spring and summer are found to be “good” seasons (e.g., Buckles and Hungerman, 2013; Currie and Schwandt, 2013).
Using birth certificate and Census data we provide new evidence on season of birth patterns and correlates with demographic and socioeconomic characteristics among married women, which are absent among unmarried women with no paternity acknowledgement ontheir child’s birth certificate, or among those using assisted reproductive technology (ART)procedures. We argue that these can be explained by season of birth being a choice variablesubject to economic and biological constraints, when women do plan fertility timing. Theplausibility of a demand for season of birth is also documented by the positive averagemarginal willingness to pay for season of birth and spring in particular, which we estimateusing discrete choice experiments in the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform.Plots of first birth prevalence and influenza activity by quarter presented in Figure 1aare consistent with married women choosing a spring birth because their child will be born the farthest from the influenza peak within a year, or summer because there are fewer germsat birth and in the last stage of pregnancy. On the contrary, among unmarried motherswith no paternity acknowledgement, fall (Quarter 4) births are more prevalent, while spring(Quarter 2) births are less prevalent, in spite of facing the same influenza activity as marriedmothers. Moreover, Figure 1b shows that working in particular occupations is correlated with a higher spring birth and lower fall birth prevalence. Thus, influenza and the winterdisease environment are not sufficient to fully explain the observed birth seasonality.
Using US Vital Statistics data on all first singleton births to married women aged 20-45,we show that the prevalence of spring births is related to mother’s age in a humped-shapedfashion, positively related to education and being white, and negatively related to beingHispanic, smoking and receiving food benefits during pregnancy, conditional on gestationweek, state and year fixed effects. However, maternal socioeconomic characteristics do notcorrelate with the probability of having a baby in summer, despite summer being the mostcommon birth season in the US. When focusing on the placebo group of unmarried motherswith no paternity acknowledgement on their child’s birth certificate, our seasonal patternsare muted, consistent with the idea that the children of unmarried women with no stablepartner or long-term relationship are less likely to be planned, and thus it is less likelythat their season of birth is chosen (Almond and Rossin-Slater, 2013; Rossin-Slater, 2017). Indeed, in the US, unmarried women are reported to be more than twice as likely to haveunwanted pregnancies than married women (Finer and Zolna, 2016; Mosher et al., 2012).
We then examine the interaction of a first singleton child’s season of birth with his orher mother’s occupation using data from the American Community Survey. Our findingsreveal that in professions allowing more flexibility in taking time off work and those thathave summer breaks (e.g., among teachers), married mothers are additionally more likely tochoose spring births butnotsummer births, and this holds conditional on age, education,race, ethnicity and state and year fixed effects. This is consistent with the evidence inFigure 1b.
Inspired by Buckles and Hungerman (2013), who recognize that a thorough investigationof preferences for birth timing is an open and fertile challenge for future work, we devisedand ran a series of discrete choice experiments in the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace in September 2016 and May 2018, to elicit the willingness to pay for season of birth in two different quarters of the year.1We estimate the average marginal willingness to payfor a spring birth to be 620 USD. We also find that the average marginal willingness to pay (WTP) is larger (about 877 USD) among married mothers aged 20-45, our main groupof analysis in the birth certificate and Census data, whereas among respondents who donot intend to have children the average marginal WTP is much smaller (about 455 USD)and not statistically different from zero, which provides an interesting placebo. Exploringheterogeneity by number of children, we find that our estimate is driven by married mothersaged 20-45 with two or more children (1,100 USD).Using a mixed logit to allow for preference heterogeneity among married mothers aged20-45 in the M-Turk data, we estimate the marginal WTP for spring births for each marriedmother aged 20-45. We then predict the estimated marginal WTP for spring births using maternal characteristics in the same M-Turk data. Assuming transportability from M-Turk to birth certificate data, we use the estimated coefficients on the maternal characteristics to predict the marginal WTP for each married mother aged 20-45 in the latter data. We then investigate the relationship between predicted marginal WTP and spring births in the birthcertificate data. We find that a 1,000 USD increase in the predicted marginal WTP for aspring birth is associated with an increase in the actual probability of giving birth in springof about 15 pp. This finding suggests that average elicited M-Turk responses do correlatewith actual behavior.Our estimated seasonality gaps, between−0.5 pp (Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic) and 0.9pp (received food benefits during pregnancy) in the birth certificate data, and 5 pp by occupation in the Census data, are sizable. Buckles and Hungerman (2013) report a 1 pp difference in teenage mothers and a 2 pp difference in unmarried or non-white mothers between January births and May births, and they interpret these gaps as “strikingly large”compared to the estimated effects of welfare benefits on non-marital childbearing (Rosen-zweig, 1999) or unemployment on fertility (Dehejia and Lleras-Muney, 2004).
1 We thank an anonymous referee for the suggestion to run an additional survey in a different season.
Summary: We study the determinants of season of birth for married women aged 20‐45 in the US, using birth certificate and Census data. We also elicit the willingness to pay for season of birth through discrete choice experiments implemented on the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. We document that the probability of a spring first birth is significantly related to mother's age, education, race, ethnicity, smoking status during pregnancy, receiving WIC food benefits during pregnancy, pre‐pregnancy obesity and the mother working in “education, training, and library” occupations, whereas among unmarried women without a father acknowledged on their child's birth certificate, all our findings are muted. A summer first birth does not depend on socioeconomic characteristics, although it is the most common birth season in the US. Among married women aged 20‐45, we estimate the average marginal willingness to pay (WTP) for a spring birth to be 877 USD. This implies a willingness to trade‐off 560 grams of birth weight to achieve a spring birth. Finally, we estimate that an increase of 1,000 USD in the predicted marginal WTP for a spring birth is associated with a 15 pp increase in the probability of obtaining an actual spring birth.
Keywords: quarter of birth, fertility timing, willingness to pay, discrete choice experiments.
1 Introduction
While the relevance of season of birth has been acknowledged at least since Huntington’s 1938 book “Season of Birth: Its Relation to Human Abilities”, it was not until recently that season of birth became prominent in biology, economics and social sciences more generally.There is now a well-established literature illustrating a variety of aspects that are significantly correlated with season of birth, including birth weight, education, earnings, height, life expectancy, schizophrenia, etc. Although understanding the channels through which season of birth affects these outcomes still represents a scientific challenge, in the US winter months are associated with lower birth weight, education, and earnings, while spring and summer are found to be “good” seasons (e.g., Buckles and Hungerman, 2013; Currie and Schwandt, 2013).
Using birth certificate and Census data we provide new evidence on season of birth patterns and correlates with demographic and socioeconomic characteristics among married women, which are absent among unmarried women with no paternity acknowledgement ontheir child’s birth certificate, or among those using assisted reproductive technology (ART)procedures. We argue that these can be explained by season of birth being a choice variablesubject to economic and biological constraints, when women do plan fertility timing. Theplausibility of a demand for season of birth is also documented by the positive averagemarginal willingness to pay for season of birth and spring in particular, which we estimateusing discrete choice experiments in the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform.Plots of first birth prevalence and influenza activity by quarter presented in Figure 1aare consistent with married women choosing a spring birth because their child will be born the farthest from the influenza peak within a year, or summer because there are fewer germsat birth and in the last stage of pregnancy. On the contrary, among unmarried motherswith no paternity acknowledgement, fall (Quarter 4) births are more prevalent, while spring(Quarter 2) births are less prevalent, in spite of facing the same influenza activity as marriedmothers. Moreover, Figure 1b shows that working in particular occupations is correlated with a higher spring birth and lower fall birth prevalence. Thus, influenza and the winterdisease environment are not sufficient to fully explain the observed birth seasonality.
Using US Vital Statistics data on all first singleton births to married women aged 20-45,we show that the prevalence of spring births is related to mother’s age in a humped-shapedfashion, positively related to education and being white, and negatively related to beingHispanic, smoking and receiving food benefits during pregnancy, conditional on gestationweek, state and year fixed effects. However, maternal socioeconomic characteristics do notcorrelate with the probability of having a baby in summer, despite summer being the mostcommon birth season in the US. When focusing on the placebo group of unmarried motherswith no paternity acknowledgement on their child’s birth certificate, our seasonal patternsare muted, consistent with the idea that the children of unmarried women with no stablepartner or long-term relationship are less likely to be planned, and thus it is less likelythat their season of birth is chosen (Almond and Rossin-Slater, 2013; Rossin-Slater, 2017). Indeed, in the US, unmarried women are reported to be more than twice as likely to haveunwanted pregnancies than married women (Finer and Zolna, 2016; Mosher et al., 2012).
We then examine the interaction of a first singleton child’s season of birth with his orher mother’s occupation using data from the American Community Survey. Our findingsreveal that in professions allowing more flexibility in taking time off work and those thathave summer breaks (e.g., among teachers), married mothers are additionally more likely tochoose spring births butnotsummer births, and this holds conditional on age, education,race, ethnicity and state and year fixed effects. This is consistent with the evidence inFigure 1b.
Inspired by Buckles and Hungerman (2013), who recognize that a thorough investigationof preferences for birth timing is an open and fertile challenge for future work, we devisedand ran a series of discrete choice experiments in the Amazon Mechanical Turk marketplace in September 2016 and May 2018, to elicit the willingness to pay for season of birth in two different quarters of the year.1We estimate the average marginal willingness to payfor a spring birth to be 620 USD. We also find that the average marginal willingness to pay (WTP) is larger (about 877 USD) among married mothers aged 20-45, our main groupof analysis in the birth certificate and Census data, whereas among respondents who donot intend to have children the average marginal WTP is much smaller (about 455 USD)and not statistically different from zero, which provides an interesting placebo. Exploringheterogeneity by number of children, we find that our estimate is driven by married mothersaged 20-45 with two or more children (1,100 USD).Using a mixed logit to allow for preference heterogeneity among married mothers aged20-45 in the M-Turk data, we estimate the marginal WTP for spring births for each marriedmother aged 20-45. We then predict the estimated marginal WTP for spring births using maternal characteristics in the same M-Turk data. Assuming transportability from M-Turk to birth certificate data, we use the estimated coefficients on the maternal characteristics to predict the marginal WTP for each married mother aged 20-45 in the latter data. We then investigate the relationship between predicted marginal WTP and spring births in the birthcertificate data. We find that a 1,000 USD increase in the predicted marginal WTP for aspring birth is associated with an increase in the actual probability of giving birth in springof about 15 pp. This finding suggests that average elicited M-Turk responses do correlatewith actual behavior.Our estimated seasonality gaps, between−0.5 pp (Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic) and 0.9pp (received food benefits during pregnancy) in the birth certificate data, and 5 pp by occupation in the Census data, are sizable. Buckles and Hungerman (2013) report a 1 pp difference in teenage mothers and a 2 pp difference in unmarried or non-white mothers between January births and May births, and they interpret these gaps as “strikingly large”compared to the estimated effects of welfare benefits on non-marital childbearing (Rosen-zweig, 1999) or unemployment on fertility (Dehejia and Lleras-Muney, 2004).
1 We thank an anonymous referee for the suggestion to run an additional survey in a different season.
Sexual Orientation Trajectories: Theory supports multidimensional continuums; substantial changes were common until late 20s & sexual orientation development continues throughout emerging adulthood
Sexual Orientation Trajectories Based on Sexual Attractions, Partners, and Identity: A Longitudinal Investigation From Adolescence Through Young Adulthood Using a U.S. Representative Sample. Christine E. Kaestle. The Journal of Sex Research, Apr 28 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1577351
Abstract: Defining sexual minority status longitudinally over critical developmental periods is essential for understanding the roots of health disparities. Theory supports multidimensional continuums, but current research often examines single measures of sexual activity, sexual attractions, or self-labeled identity separately. Here, a new typology of longitudinal latent classes describes dynamic multidimensional processes continuing from late adolescence (ages 16 to 18) through the late 20s. Using Add Health data (N = 6,864), longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA), a person-centered approach, showed significant differences between the orientation experiences of males and females (invariance tests led to stratification by sex). The male LLCA model predicted four classes: straight males (87.4%), minimal sexual expression males (6.5%), mostly straight and bi males (3.8%), and emerging gay males (2.4%). The female LLCA model predicted five classes: straight females (73.8%), minimal sexual expression females (7%), mostly straight discontinuous females (10.2%), emerging bi females (7.5%), and emerging lesbian females (1.5%). Some classes represent generally consistent indicators across dimensions over time, while other classes describe more emerging or discontinuous trajectories. Substantial changes were common not only from late adolescence to the early 20s but also from the early 20s to the late 20s, indicating that sexual orientation development continues throughout emerging adulthood.
The most critical barrier to addressing health and well-being disparities for sexual minority groups is the lack of consensus and quality in gathering, operationalizing, and analyzing data about this heterogeneous community. This is especially important for critical developmental periods, such as adolescence and young adulthood, when sexual orientation is often in the process of being established and many disparities begin to emerge ...As discussed in the sections that follow, sexual orientation paradigms that are unidimensional, that are not on a continuum, that are static, or that assume identical male and female experiences may create limitations in research among sexual minority young people.
Popular version: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/tfg-sct050219.php
Abstract: Defining sexual minority status longitudinally over critical developmental periods is essential for understanding the roots of health disparities. Theory supports multidimensional continuums, but current research often examines single measures of sexual activity, sexual attractions, or self-labeled identity separately. Here, a new typology of longitudinal latent classes describes dynamic multidimensional processes continuing from late adolescence (ages 16 to 18) through the late 20s. Using Add Health data (N = 6,864), longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA), a person-centered approach, showed significant differences between the orientation experiences of males and females (invariance tests led to stratification by sex). The male LLCA model predicted four classes: straight males (87.4%), minimal sexual expression males (6.5%), mostly straight and bi males (3.8%), and emerging gay males (2.4%). The female LLCA model predicted five classes: straight females (73.8%), minimal sexual expression females (7%), mostly straight discontinuous females (10.2%), emerging bi females (7.5%), and emerging lesbian females (1.5%). Some classes represent generally consistent indicators across dimensions over time, while other classes describe more emerging or discontinuous trajectories. Substantial changes were common not only from late adolescence to the early 20s but also from the early 20s to the late 20s, indicating that sexual orientation development continues throughout emerging adulthood.
The most critical barrier to addressing health and well-being disparities for sexual minority groups is the lack of consensus and quality in gathering, operationalizing, and analyzing data about this heterogeneous community. This is especially important for critical developmental periods, such as adolescence and young adulthood, when sexual orientation is often in the process of being established and many disparities begin to emerge ...As discussed in the sections that follow, sexual orientation paradigms that are unidimensional, that are not on a continuum, that are static, or that assume identical male and female experiences may create limitations in research among sexual minority young people.
Popular version: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/tfg-sct050219.php
Body odor perception moderates mate choice, provides a source of comfort in existing relationships, may signal the breakdown, identify a healthy mate, enhance sexual experiences, relationship security & ensure empathic responsivity
The role of body odors and olfactory ability in the initiation, maintenance and breakdown of romantic relationships – A review. Mehmet K. Mahmut, Ilona Croy. Physiology & Behavior, May 9 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.05.003
Highlights
• Body odors and olfactory ability both play a role in the three broad stages of human romantic relationships; initiation, maintenance and breakdown.
• An intact olfactory ability is vital for the perception of and response to chemical signals from potential and current partners.
• Congenital anosmia is associated poorer relationship outcomes, highlighting the importance an intact olfactory ability.
• In relationship initiation, body odors may help humans select genetically and sexually compatible mates.
• A partner's body odor may help maintain a relationship by providing a sense of comfort and increased preference due to familiarity.
• Disliking a partner's body odor may signal a reduction in compatibility and facilitate the determination of the relationships.
Abstract: The aim of this review is to present direct and indirect lines of converging evidence that highlight the many ways our body odors and sense of smell may influence the three broad stages of romantic relationships; initiation, maintenance and breakdown. This emerging area of study requires a multidisciplinary empirical approach. Here we survey research findings that taken together, suggest that body odor perception moderates mate choice, provides a source of comfort in existing relationships and may signal the breakdown of a relationship through disgust processes. In terms of olfactory ability, having a good sense of smell may facilitate identifying a healthy mate, enhance sexual experiences, relationship security and ensure empathic responsivity, predictors of relationship longevity. We therefore conclude that olfaction plays an important – yet understudied – role in romantic relationships.
Highlights
• Body odors and olfactory ability both play a role in the three broad stages of human romantic relationships; initiation, maintenance and breakdown.
• An intact olfactory ability is vital for the perception of and response to chemical signals from potential and current partners.
• Congenital anosmia is associated poorer relationship outcomes, highlighting the importance an intact olfactory ability.
• In relationship initiation, body odors may help humans select genetically and sexually compatible mates.
• A partner's body odor may help maintain a relationship by providing a sense of comfort and increased preference due to familiarity.
• Disliking a partner's body odor may signal a reduction in compatibility and facilitate the determination of the relationships.
Abstract: The aim of this review is to present direct and indirect lines of converging evidence that highlight the many ways our body odors and sense of smell may influence the three broad stages of romantic relationships; initiation, maintenance and breakdown. This emerging area of study requires a multidisciplinary empirical approach. Here we survey research findings that taken together, suggest that body odor perception moderates mate choice, provides a source of comfort in existing relationships and may signal the breakdown of a relationship through disgust processes. In terms of olfactory ability, having a good sense of smell may facilitate identifying a healthy mate, enhance sexual experiences, relationship security and ensure empathic responsivity, predictors of relationship longevity. We therefore conclude that olfaction plays an important – yet understudied – role in romantic relationships.
People tend to self-assess their ability to convincingly tell the truth higher than their ability to lie convincingly; this poor lie-telling ability rating is based on the desire to sustain a positive self-image
Elaad E. (2019) Self-Assessed Lie- and Truth-Telling Abilities: Demographic, Personality, and Behavioral Correlates. In: Docan-Morgan T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. April 30 2019. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_23
Abstract: This chapter reviews demographic, personality, and behavioral correlates of self-assessed lie- and truth-telling abilities. People tend to self-assess their ability to convincingly tell the truth higher than their ability to lie convincingly. The high truth-telling ability assessment rests on the belief that truth-telling is a simple matter of “telling it like it is” and aligns with the general human assumption that most communications are truthful. In this context, it is interesting to study the state of mind of people who tend to rate their ability to convince when telling the truth lower than average. The relatively poor lie-telling ability rating is based on the desire to sustain a positive self-image. Thus, if one is not a skilled lie-teller, they may believe that they are an honest person. Therefore, attention should be directed to people who overrate their lie-telling ability. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: Self-assessments Truth-telling ability Lie-telling ability Personality Biases Meta-analysis
Abstract: This chapter reviews demographic, personality, and behavioral correlates of self-assessed lie- and truth-telling abilities. People tend to self-assess their ability to convincingly tell the truth higher than their ability to lie convincingly. The high truth-telling ability assessment rests on the belief that truth-telling is a simple matter of “telling it like it is” and aligns with the general human assumption that most communications are truthful. In this context, it is interesting to study the state of mind of people who tend to rate their ability to convince when telling the truth lower than average. The relatively poor lie-telling ability rating is based on the desire to sustain a positive self-image. Thus, if one is not a skilled lie-teller, they may believe that they are an honest person. Therefore, attention should be directed to people who overrate their lie-telling ability. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: Self-assessments Truth-telling ability Lie-telling ability Personality Biases Meta-analysis
By increasing current cash-flows tax cuts alleviate financing frictions, hereby stimulating current investment; multipliers are close to 1 for constrained firms, especially new entrants, & negative for larger & unconstrained firms
Financial Frictions and Stimulative Effects of Temporary Corporate Tax Cuts. William Gbohoui, Rui Castro. IMF Working Paper No. 19/97, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/07/Financial-Frictions-and-Stimulative-Effects-of-Temporary-Corporate-Tax-Cuts-46641
Summary: This paper uses an industry equilibrium model where some firms are financially constrained to quantify the effects of a transitory corporate tax cut funded by a future tax increase on the U.S. economy. It finds that by increasing current cash-flows tax cuts alleviate financing frictions, hereby stimulating current investment. Per dollar of tax stimulus, aggregate investment increases by 26 cents on impact, and aggregate output by 3.5 cents. The average effect masks heterogeneity: multipliers are close to 1 for constrained firms, especially new entrants, and negative for larger and unconstrained firms. The output effects extend well past the period the policy is reversed, leading to a cumulative multiplier of 7.2 cents. Multipliers are significantly larger when controlling for the investment crowding-out effect among unconstrained firms.
Summary: This paper uses an industry equilibrium model where some firms are financially constrained to quantify the effects of a transitory corporate tax cut funded by a future tax increase on the U.S. economy. It finds that by increasing current cash-flows tax cuts alleviate financing frictions, hereby stimulating current investment. Per dollar of tax stimulus, aggregate investment increases by 26 cents on impact, and aggregate output by 3.5 cents. The average effect masks heterogeneity: multipliers are close to 1 for constrained firms, especially new entrants, and negative for larger and unconstrained firms. The output effects extend well past the period the policy is reversed, leading to a cumulative multiplier of 7.2 cents. Multipliers are significantly larger when controlling for the investment crowding-out effect among unconstrained firms.
Almost no information assessing women’s responses to a male partner pretending to experience orgasm or responses to this deception in casual relationships
Brewer G. (2019) Deceiving for and During Sex. In: Docan-Morgan T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-96334-1_29
Abstract: Romantic and sexual relationships form an important part of the social landscape. These relationships are however vulnerable to deception, which may occur prior to intercourse (in order to obtain sex) or during sex (for a range of reasons including enhancement of relationship satisfaction). The current chapter details the use of deception to obtain sex, e.g., the use of ‘false advertising’ to attract a partner and the use of deception during sex such as pretending to experience orgasm and infidelity. Throughout the chapter, important differences between men and women are highlighted.
Keywords: False advertising Infidelity Online dating Orgasm Sex differences Sexting Deceptive self-presentation
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Though women are more likely than men to pretend to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse (Thornhill, Gangestad, & Comer, 1995), men also engage in this form of deception. Specifically, 25% of heterosexual men report having pretended to experience orgasm on at least one occasion (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). This may involve a range of verbal signals (e.g., moaning, saying that they were close to orgasm) or changing body movement (e.g., increasing strength or speed of thrusting prior to “finishing”). Compared to women, men are more likely to change body movements (e.g., thrusts) and less likely to moan or alter their breathing rate (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). Similar to women, men may pretend to experience orgasm because they feel that orgasm has taken too long and want the sex to end or wish to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings. They are also more likely to pretend while intoxicated or after experiencing orgasm earlier the same day (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). For example, Muehlenhard and Shippee (2010) report that one man explained “One night after a couple hours of heavy drinking I was talking to this girl on my floor and apparently I was hitting on her. One thing led to another and I started sobering up during sex so I faked to make her go away… She is unattractive / annoying [and I] wanted to get her off me…when my senses came about and I took my drunk goggles off” (p. 558). Men may also choose to pretend when they do not want the partner to know that they have not experienced orgasm, which may reflect societal expectations that men should always be prepared for intercourse (Zilbergeld, 1999). For a minority of men, pretending may be used to conceal incidence of premature ejaculation (Steiner, 1981). However, relatively few studies have investigated the use of pretending to experience orgasm by men, and additional research in this area is required.
Factors Influencing the Likelihood of Pretending to Experience Orgasm
There is considerable variation with regard to the frequency of pretending to experience orgasms and motivations for this behavior. The status and quality of the sexual relationship itself are particularly important. For example, pretending to experience orgasm is most common among single compared to married women (Darling & Davidson, 1986), and more frequent among lesbian and bisexual women compared to heterosexual women (Cooper, Conner, & Fauber, 2010). Furthermore, women whose partners are less tolerant and agreeable are most likely to pretend to experience orgasm (Ellsworth & Bailey, 2013). Numerous studies have highlighted the relationship between pretending to experience orgasm and the risk of infidelity.
Detection and Consequences
Previous research indicates that men place considerable importance on their partner’s orgasm (McKibben, Bates, Shackelford, Hafen, & LaMunyon, 2010) and may therefore question partners about their experience or attend to likely orgasm cues (e.g., vocalizations, breathing rate). Despite men’s interest in their partner’s orgasm, detection rates (i.e., the ability to detect when a woman is pretending) appear to be low. Indeed only 55% of men report that they can recognize when their partner is pretending to experience orgasm (Mialon, 2012). Furthermore, men report that their partner pretends to experience orgasm less frequently than their partners report engaging in this behavior (Ellsworth & Bailey, 2013). Though this form of deception is often successful, the consequences can be substantial. Indeed, the reactions of men who become aware that their partners have pretended to experience orgasm are similar to men responding to a partner’s infidelity (e.g., anger, betrayal; Shackelford, Leblanc, & Drass, 2000). Hence, though pretending to experience orgasm is a form of deception frequently performed by women, there is an inherent risk that it may threaten the stability and integrity of the relationship. At present, there is a paucity of information assessing women’s responses to a male partner pretending to experience orgasm or responses to this deception in casual relationships.
Abstract: Romantic and sexual relationships form an important part of the social landscape. These relationships are however vulnerable to deception, which may occur prior to intercourse (in order to obtain sex) or during sex (for a range of reasons including enhancement of relationship satisfaction). The current chapter details the use of deception to obtain sex, e.g., the use of ‘false advertising’ to attract a partner and the use of deception during sex such as pretending to experience orgasm and infidelity. Throughout the chapter, important differences between men and women are highlighted.
Keywords: False advertising Infidelity Online dating Orgasm Sex differences Sexting Deceptive self-presentation
---
Though women are more likely than men to pretend to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse (Thornhill, Gangestad, & Comer, 1995), men also engage in this form of deception. Specifically, 25% of heterosexual men report having pretended to experience orgasm on at least one occasion (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). This may involve a range of verbal signals (e.g., moaning, saying that they were close to orgasm) or changing body movement (e.g., increasing strength or speed of thrusting prior to “finishing”). Compared to women, men are more likely to change body movements (e.g., thrusts) and less likely to moan or alter their breathing rate (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). Similar to women, men may pretend to experience orgasm because they feel that orgasm has taken too long and want the sex to end or wish to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings. They are also more likely to pretend while intoxicated or after experiencing orgasm earlier the same day (Muehlenhard & Shippee, 2010). For example, Muehlenhard and Shippee (2010) report that one man explained “One night after a couple hours of heavy drinking I was talking to this girl on my floor and apparently I was hitting on her. One thing led to another and I started sobering up during sex so I faked to make her go away… She is unattractive / annoying [and I] wanted to get her off me…when my senses came about and I took my drunk goggles off” (p. 558). Men may also choose to pretend when they do not want the partner to know that they have not experienced orgasm, which may reflect societal expectations that men should always be prepared for intercourse (Zilbergeld, 1999). For a minority of men, pretending may be used to conceal incidence of premature ejaculation (Steiner, 1981). However, relatively few studies have investigated the use of pretending to experience orgasm by men, and additional research in this area is required.
Factors Influencing the Likelihood of Pretending to Experience Orgasm
There is considerable variation with regard to the frequency of pretending to experience orgasms and motivations for this behavior. The status and quality of the sexual relationship itself are particularly important. For example, pretending to experience orgasm is most common among single compared to married women (Darling & Davidson, 1986), and more frequent among lesbian and bisexual women compared to heterosexual women (Cooper, Conner, & Fauber, 2010). Furthermore, women whose partners are less tolerant and agreeable are most likely to pretend to experience orgasm (Ellsworth & Bailey, 2013). Numerous studies have highlighted the relationship between pretending to experience orgasm and the risk of infidelity.
Detection and Consequences
Previous research indicates that men place considerable importance on their partner’s orgasm (McKibben, Bates, Shackelford, Hafen, & LaMunyon, 2010) and may therefore question partners about their experience or attend to likely orgasm cues (e.g., vocalizations, breathing rate). Despite men’s interest in their partner’s orgasm, detection rates (i.e., the ability to detect when a woman is pretending) appear to be low. Indeed only 55% of men report that they can recognize when their partner is pretending to experience orgasm (Mialon, 2012). Furthermore, men report that their partner pretends to experience orgasm less frequently than their partners report engaging in this behavior (Ellsworth & Bailey, 2013). Though this form of deception is often successful, the consequences can be substantial. Indeed, the reactions of men who become aware that their partners have pretended to experience orgasm are similar to men responding to a partner’s infidelity (e.g., anger, betrayal; Shackelford, Leblanc, & Drass, 2000). Hence, though pretending to experience orgasm is a form of deception frequently performed by women, there is an inherent risk that it may threaten the stability and integrity of the relationship. At present, there is a paucity of information assessing women’s responses to a male partner pretending to experience orgasm or responses to this deception in casual relationships.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
The women men are attracted to in well-nourished populations have low body mass indices & small waist sizes combined with relatively large hips; men are attracted to signs of being nubile & nulliparous
Evidence supporting nubility and reproductive value as the key to human female physical attractiveness. William D. Lassek, Steven J. C. Gaulin. Evolution and Human Behavior, May 8 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.05.001
Abstract: Selection should favor mating preferences that increase the chooser's reproductive success. Many previous studies have shown that the women men find most attractive in well-nourished populations have low body mass indices (BMIs) and small waist sizes combined with relatively large hips, resulting in low waist-hip ratios (WHRs). A frequently proposed explanation for these preferences is that such women may have enhanced health and fertility; but extensive evidence contradicts this health-and-fertility explanation. An alternative view is that men are attracted to signs of nubility and high reproductive value , i.e., by indicators of physical and sexual maturity in young women who have not been pregnant. Here we provide evidence in support of the view that a small waist size together with a low WHR and BMI is a strong and reliable sign of nubility. Using U.S. data from large national health surveys, we show that WHR, waist/thigh, waist/stature, and BMI are all lower in the age group (15-19) in which women reach physical and sexual maturity, after which all of these anthropometric measures increase. We also show that a smaller waist, in conjunction with relatively larger hips or thighs, is strongly associated with nulligravidity and with higher blood levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fatty acid that is probably limiting for infant brain development. Thus, a woman with the small waist and relatively large hips that men find attractive is very likely to be nubile and nulliparous, with maximal bodily stores of key reproductive resources.
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Introduction
Because differential reproductive success drives adaptive evolution, selection should favor males and females whose mating preferences maximize their numbers of reproductively successful offspring. Thusboth should be attracted to anthropometric traits reliably correlated with the ability of the opposite sex to contribute to this goal. In a landmark bookSymons (1979) argued that the female attributesmost likely to enhance male reproductive success are indicators of nubility and its associated high reproductive value (see also Andrews et al.,2017; Fessleret al, 2005; Marlowe, 1998; Sugiyama, 2005; Symons,1995), and the purpose of this paper is to test whether the availableevidence isconsistent with Symons’view. Such a test is needed because, subsequentto Symons’formulation,a competing hypothesis proposed that men are primarily attuned to indicators of current health and fertilityand that these are the female attributes indicated bythe low WHRs and BMIslinked with high attractiveness(Singh, 1993a; 1993b; Tovée et al., 1998). Theexistence of male preferences for low WHRs and BMIs hasbeen supported by many other studies in industrialized populations,where women are generally well-nourished.Butanyexplanation ofthemmust address whypreferred values are much lower than mean or modal values in typical young women. In a recent study (Lassek&Gaulin, 2016), the mean WHR of PlayboyPlaymates (0.68) was 2 standard deviations below the means for typical college undergraduates (0.74) and the mean WHR (0.55) of imaginary females chosen for maximal attractiveness from comics, cartoons, animatedfilms, graphic-novels, or video-games was 5 standard deviations below the undergraduate mean. Jessica Rabbit, the most popular imaginary female, has a WHR of 0.42. Preferred values of BMI are also in the negative tail of the actual female distribution: the mean BMI of Playmates (18.5) was 2 SD lower than the mean for college undergraduates (22.2). A recent study of 323female comic book characters from the Marvel universefound that the mean WHR was 0.60±0.07 and the modal BMI was 17; WHR was two SD lower in 34 characters(0.61) than in the actressesportraying themin films (0.72)(Burch & Johnsen, 2019).
1.1 Health and fertility as the basis for female attractiveness?
Singh (1993a, 1993b) suggested that men are attracted to low WHRs and BMIs because they are signs of enhanced female health and fertility, and this idea has been widely accepted (e.g., Grammeret al.,2003; Marloweet al.,2005; Pawlowski&Dunbar,2005; Singh &Singh 2011; Sugiyama, 2005; Tovée et al.,1998; Weeden & Sabini,2005). But thisargument seems inconsistent with the extremity of the preferred values(above). As a result of stabilizing selection, phenotypes associated with optimal health and fertility should, and do,lie at the center—not the extreme—of the female distribution. Given such stabilizing selectionon females, male preferences for traits associated with health and fertility should then target modal female values. Based on a review of a large number of relevant studies and on new analyses, it has been recently shown thatWHRs and BMIs in the negative tails of their distributions—the values rated most attractive in well-nourished populations—usually indicate poorerrather than enhanced health (Lassek&Gaulin,2018a) and lowerfertility (Lassek&Gaulin,2018b)(although lower BMI’sin younger primigravidasmay reduce risksof obstructed labor and hypertension). Given that the predictions of the health-and-fertility hypothesis are not well supported, the main goal of this article is to evaluate theprior hypothesis that maybetter explain why males in well-nourished populations prefer female phenotypes at the negative extreme of their distributions: an evolvedpreference for nubility (Symons 1979, 1995) and its demographic correlate, maximal reproductive value (Andrews et al.,2017; Fessler et al., 2005).
1.2 Nubility as the basis for female attractiveness?
Despite a lack of empirical support, the health-and-fertility hypothesis has largely eclipsed Donald Symons’s earlier proposal thatmen are attracted to nubility—to indicators of recent physical and sexual maturity in young nulligravidas (never pregnant women) (Fessler et al., 2005; Symons,1979;1995; Sugiyama, 2005). Symons defined the nubile phase as 3-5 years after menarche when young women are “just beginning ovulatorymenstrual cycles” but have not been pregnant (Symons.1995, p. 88). This corresponds to age 15-19 in well-nourished populations, but sexual maturityin some subsistence groupsmay be delayed (Ellis,2004; Eveleth&Tanner,1990; Symons 1979). Symons suggested that the female characteristics men find attractive—such as a low WHR—are indicatorsof nubility. And he stressedthat any preference for nubility inevitably contrasts with a preference for current fertility, because the teen years of peak nubility are a well-documented period of lowfertilitydue to a decreased frequency of ovulation,with 40-90% of cycles anovulatory, while maximum fertility is not reached until the mid to late 20’s (Apter,1980; Ashley-Montague,1939; Ellisonet al., 1987; Larsen&Yan,2000; Loucks,2006; Metcalf&Mackenzie,1980; Talwar, 1965; Weinsteinet al., 1990; Wesselink et al., 2017). Thus,if the nubility hypothesis is correct, the fertility hypothesis must be incorrect. Nubility is closely linked to a woman’s maximum reproductive value(RV), her age-specific expectation of future offspring, given the underlying fertility and mortality curves of her population (Fisher,1930). The peak of RV is defined by survival to sexual maturity with all reproductive resources intact. The age of peak RV depends in part on the average ages of menarche and marriage, but typically ranges from 14to 18 in human populations (Fisher,1930;Keyfitz&Caswell, 2005; Keyfitz&Flieger,1971). This corresponds to Symons’ age of nubility. Calculations of reproductive value in the !Kung (Daly & Wilson, 1988) and in South Africa (Bowles & Wilson, 2005) both found the peak age to be 15.Symons argued that the attractiveness of the nubile age group is supported by the finding that this is the age groupwhen marriage and first pregnancies typically occur in subsistence culturesdespite reduced fecundability.For example, in the Yanomamo(polygynous hunter-horticulturalists of southern Venezuela), menarche is typically at age 12, marriage at 14, and the first birth at 16 (Symons,1995). Asimilar relationship between nubility and first reproduction characterizesother subsistence populations(Table 1), wherethe mean age of first birth is typically under age 20 and averages 3.9±1.1years after menarche.Inpopulationswith access toeffectivecontraception,the onset of sexual activity may be a better indicator of nubility than the age of marriage or first birth, although multiple factors may influence these ages. In a 2005 survey of women in 46 countries, the average age of first intercourse ranged from 15 to 19 with a mean of 17.2 (Durex, 2009) and was 17.1 in a recent sample of American women (Finer,2007).
Prior studies suggest that attractive females exhibit the phenotypic correlates of nubility. In the Dobe !Kung, four photographed young women considered “beautiful girls” by the !Kung were all age 17 (Howell, 2000, p. 38).In samplesfrom more developed countries, youthful bodies are also considered attractive. In a study of males viewing nude photos of female infants, children (mean age 7.7), pubescent (mean 13.5), and young adult females (mean 23.1), both viewing duration and ratings of physical attractiveness were highest for pubescent females (Quinseyet al., 1996). Marlowe(1998) has suggested thatan evolved attractionto nubility explains men’s preference for relatively large, firm, non-sagging female breasts, and this view is supported by a study in the Hewa (Coe &Steadman, 1995). Of particular relevance are two studies that directly explore the relationship of attractiveness to age. A recent study using body scans with raters from 10 countries found that BMI was inversely related to both rated attractiveness and to estimated age (Wang et al., 2015). In another recent study, age estimated from neck-down photographs of females in bathing suits had a strong negative relationship with attractiveness and a strong positive relationship with WHR, BMI, and especially waist/stature ratio (Andrews et al., 2017).Symons (1995) suggests several adaptive reasons why selection might favor men preferringnubile females over older females who have higher current fertility: 1) A male who pairs with a nubile female is likely to have the maximum opportunity to sire her offspring during her subsequent most fecund years. A nubile woman is also 2) likely to have more living relatives to assist her than an older woman, and 3) to survive long enough for her children to be independent before her death. 4) A male choosing a nubile female avoids investing in children siredby other men and possible conflict with the mother (his mate) over allocation of her parental effort among his children and the children of her prior mates. By definition, a nubile woman is not investing time and energy in other men’s children because sheis nulliparous.Moreover, in a wide array of competitive situations, those who stake an early claim are likely to have an advantage over those who wait until the contested resource is fully available(e.g., lining up the day before concert ticketsgo on sale; Roth&Xing,1994). Thus,the men who were most strongly attracted to signs of nubility would minimize their chances of being shut out of reproductive opportunities. This dynamic would generate selection on men to seek commitment offemale reproductive potential at younger ages. In such an environment, males without a preference for signs of nubility would be at a disadvantage in mating competition, and those who preferred women at the age of peak fertility (in the mid to late 20s) would likely find few available mates. In subsistence cultures, post-nubile women are very likely to be married and to have children; they are usually either pregnant or nursing and so ovulate infrequently due to ongoing reproductive commitments (Marlowe,2005; Strassman, 1997;Symons,1995).
1.3 External signs of nubility
Following Symons (1979;1995), we consider a woman to be nubile when she has menstrual cycles, has attained maximal skeletal growth, is sexually mature based on Tanner stages (see below), but has not beenpregnant. Maximal skeletal growth and stature are usually attained two to three years after the onset of menstrual periods, the latter typically occurring at ages 12-13 in well nourished populations (Eveleth&Tanner,1990; Table 1). In a representative American sample, completed skeletal growth resulting in maximal stature was attained by age 15-16 (Hamill et al., 1973). The two widely-accepted indicators of female sexual maturity in postmenarcheal women are the attainment of 1)adult breast sizeandconfiguration of the areola and nipple, and 2) an adult pattern of pubic hair (Tanner,1962, Marshall&Tanner,1969). In a sample of 192 English female adolescents, the average age for attaining adult (stage 5) pubic hair was 14.4±1.1 and for adult (stage 5)breasts was 15.3±1.7. More recent samples show similar ages for attainment of breast and pubic hair maturity (Beunenet al., 2006). In other studies, puberty was judged complete by age 16-17 in American, Asian, and Swiss samples (Huanget al., 2004;Largo&Prader,1983;Leeet al., 1980), based on completed skeletal growth and presence of adult secondary sexual characteristics. The timing of these developmental markers supports Symons’ (1979) suggestion that nubility occurs 3 to 5 years after menarche. We will assessthe timing of these developmental indicators in a large U.S. sample.
Little attractiveness research has focused on these features of the developing female phenotype, butSingh (1993b) and Symons (1995) separately suggested that both a low BMIand a low WHR are also indicators of nubility. If so, this developmental pattern would explain the male preference for low BMI and low WHR in populations where both measures increase after the nubile period. Available evidence suggests threeways that low WHRs, BMIs, and small waists may indicate that young women in well-nourished populations are at peak nubility and reproductive value: 1) these measuresare lower in the nubile age group (where nubility is defined based on completed stature growth and attainment of Tanner stage5) than they are in older women, 2) they show that a woman is unlikely to have been pregnant, a requirement for nubility, and 3) they indicate that resources crucial for reproduction are maximal (untapped). Published evidence relevant to these points is reviewed immediately below,and we will offer newevidence that the anthropomorphic values associated with attractiveness and reproductive resources are most likely to occur in the 15-20 age group.
1.3.1 Low WHR and BMI as indicatorsof attainment of sexual maturity
WHR may be a particularly good indicator of nubility because evidence suggests that it reaches a minimum during the nubile period. During female puberty, typically occurringbetween theages 10-18, there is a marked increase in the amount of adipose tissue, e.g., from 12-15% to 25-26% of body weight (Boot et al., 1997, Lim et al., 2009; Taylor et al., 2010), a percentage of body fat far greater than that seen in most other mammals, including other primates (Pond, 1998; Pitts&Bullard, 1968). Under the influence of gonadal hormones, mostof this added adipose is deposited in the gluteofemoral depot (hips, buttocks, and thighs), a highly derived human traitthat may haveevolved to store rare fatty acids critical for the development of the large human brain (Lassek &Gaulin, 2006; 2007;2008). Thishormonally driven emphasis on gluteofemoral vs. abdominal fatstores lowers WHR, which decreases during childhood and early adolescence, reaches a minimum at ages 15 to 18, and then tends to increase (Al-Sendi et al., 2003; Bacopoulou et al., 2015; Casey et al., 1994; de Ridder et al., 1990;1992; Fredriks et al., 2005; Gillum,1999; Haas et al., 2011; Kelishadi et al., 2007; Martinez et al., 1994; Moreno et al., 2007; Taylor et al., 2010; Westrate et al., 1989). This developmental pattern supports the idea that a low WHR is a relatively conspicuous marker of nubility(in addition to other signs of sexual maturity which may be less readily assessable, such as menstruation, breast andpubic-hair development, and attainment of maximal stature).In well-nourished populationsBMIs are also lower in nubile adolescents than in older women. In a longitudinal study of American women that began in the 1930’s, the mean BMI increased from 16.7 kg/m2in early adolescence to 18.9 in late adolescence, 22.1 at age 30, 24.1 at age 40, and 26.1 at age 50 (Casey et al., 1994). Cross-sectional female samples show parallel age-related weight increases (highly correlated with BMI) (Abraham et al., 1979;Burke et al., 1996; Schutz et al., 2002; Stoudt et al., 1965). Controlling for social class and parity, age was a significant predictor of BMI in a large United Kingdom sample (Gulliford et al., 1992). In a study in which males estimated the age of femalefigures varying in BMI and WHR (Singh, 1995), they judged the figures with the lowest BMIs (15) to be the youngest,with an estimated age of 17-19.We will explore the relationship of WHR and BMI with age in a large American sample.However, in contrast to women in well-nourished groups, in subsistence populations women’s BMIs may peak at the age of nubility and subsequently decreasewith age and parity (see Lassek &Gaulin,2006). Notably, men in such populations often prefer the higher BMIs which in these cultures indicate nubility (Sherry &Marlowe 2007, Sugiyama,2005; Yu &Shepard,1998). Thus, a consistent preference for the BMIs most strongly associated with nubility could explain an apparent cross-cultural inconsistency in body-shape preferences,which is difficult to explain using the health-and-fertility hypothesis.
1.3.2 Low WHRs and BMIs and smaller waist sizes indicate a lower likelihood of previous pregnancy
An essential part of Symons’ (1979, 1995) definition of nubility (and the high reproductive value it represents) is the lack of any previous pregnancy(i.e., nulligravidity); nubile womenhaveattained physical and sexual maturity without yet expending any reproductive potential.Priorevidence suggests that a low WHR (or small waist size) is also a strong indicator of nulliparity (Bjorkelund et al., 1996; Gunderson et al., 2004; 2008; 2009; Lanska et al., 1985; Lassek &Gaulin,2006; Lewis et al., 1994; Luoto et al., 2011; Mansour et al., 2009; Rodrigues &Da Costa,2001; Smith et al., 1994; Tonkelaar et al., 1989; Wells et al., 2010). Similarly, a recent study (Butovskya et al., 2017) found a strong positive relationship between WHR and parity in seven traditional societies. Like WHR, BMI also increases with parity in wellnourished populations (Abrams et al., 2013; Bastianet al., 2005;Bobrowet al., 2013; Rodrigues &Da Costa,2001 Kochet al., 2008; Nenkoet al., 2009). Some studies have suggested that BMI may be more strongly related to parity than it is to age (Koch et al., 2008, Nenko et al., 2009), although this may be less true inolder women (Trikudanathanet al., 2013).We will explore the relationships of WHR and BMI to age and parity in a large American sample.In two studies of men’s perceptions, higher WHRs were judged to strongly increase the likelihood of a previous pregnancy (Andrewset al., 2017; Furnham &Reeves, 2006). Thus, anthropometric data suggest that a low WHR and BMI may indicate nulliparity,as well as a young age, and psychological data suggest that men interpret these female features as carrying this information.
1.4 Smaller WHRs and waist sizes indicate greater availability of reproductive resources
Because they have reached sexual maturity but have not yet been pregnant, nubile women should have maximum supplies of reproductive resources that are depleted by pregnancy and nursing, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Many studies have shown that DHA is an important resource supporting neuro-cognitive development ininfants and children(Janssen & Killiaan, 2014; Joffre et al., 2014; Lassek &Gaulin,2014;2015), andDHA stored in adiposeisdepleted by successive pregnancies (Dutta-Roy,2000, Hanebutt et al., 2008; Hornstra,2000; Lassek &Gaulin,2006;2008; Min et al., 2000). Stores of DHA would likely have beenan increasingly important aspect of mate value in the homininlineage as itexperienced dramatic brain expansion.Most of the DHA used for fetal and infant brain development is stored in gluteofemoralfatuntil it is mobilized from this depot during pregnancy and nursing(Lassek &Gaulin, 2006; Rebuffe-Scrive et al., 1985;1987). Indeed,a low WHR is associated with higher circulating levels of DHA (Harris et al., 2012; Karlsson et al., 2006; Micallef et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2008), as isa smaller waist size and lower levels ofabdominal fat(Alsahari et al, 2017; Bender et al., 2014; Howe et al., 2014; Karlsson et al., 2006; Wagner et al., 2015). Thus, young women with smaller waists and WHRs are likely to have higher levels of DHA in their stored fat and so can provide more DHA to their children during pregnancy and nursing which may result in enhanced cognitive ability in their offspring. Consistent with thepossibilitythat female body shape reveals stored neuro-cognitive resources, in a large sample of American mothers those with lower WHRs had children who scored higher on cognitive tests (controlling for other relevant factors, including income and education variables) (Lassek &Gaulin,2008). Moreover, the children ofteenage mothers, at particular risk for cognitive deficits, scoredsignificantly better on cognitive tests when their mothers had lower WHRs. To further examine the reproductive role of the gluteofemoral depot,we will assess the relationship of the waist/thigh ratio to plasma levels of DHA.
Abstract: Selection should favor mating preferences that increase the chooser's reproductive success. Many previous studies have shown that the women men find most attractive in well-nourished populations have low body mass indices (BMIs) and small waist sizes combined with relatively large hips, resulting in low waist-hip ratios (WHRs). A frequently proposed explanation for these preferences is that such women may have enhanced health and fertility; but extensive evidence contradicts this health-and-fertility explanation. An alternative view is that men are attracted to signs of nubility and high reproductive value , i.e., by indicators of physical and sexual maturity in young women who have not been pregnant. Here we provide evidence in support of the view that a small waist size together with a low WHR and BMI is a strong and reliable sign of nubility. Using U.S. data from large national health surveys, we show that WHR, waist/thigh, waist/stature, and BMI are all lower in the age group (15-19) in which women reach physical and sexual maturity, after which all of these anthropometric measures increase. We also show that a smaller waist, in conjunction with relatively larger hips or thighs, is strongly associated with nulligravidity and with higher blood levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a fatty acid that is probably limiting for infant brain development. Thus, a woman with the small waist and relatively large hips that men find attractive is very likely to be nubile and nulliparous, with maximal bodily stores of key reproductive resources.
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Introduction
Because differential reproductive success drives adaptive evolution, selection should favor males and females whose mating preferences maximize their numbers of reproductively successful offspring. Thusboth should be attracted to anthropometric traits reliably correlated with the ability of the opposite sex to contribute to this goal. In a landmark bookSymons (1979) argued that the female attributesmost likely to enhance male reproductive success are indicators of nubility and its associated high reproductive value (see also Andrews et al.,2017; Fessleret al, 2005; Marlowe, 1998; Sugiyama, 2005; Symons,1995), and the purpose of this paper is to test whether the availableevidence isconsistent with Symons’view. Such a test is needed because, subsequentto Symons’formulation,a competing hypothesis proposed that men are primarily attuned to indicators of current health and fertilityand that these are the female attributes indicated bythe low WHRs and BMIslinked with high attractiveness(Singh, 1993a; 1993b; Tovée et al., 1998). Theexistence of male preferences for low WHRs and BMIs hasbeen supported by many other studies in industrialized populations,where women are generally well-nourished.Butanyexplanation ofthemmust address whypreferred values are much lower than mean or modal values in typical young women. In a recent study (Lassek&Gaulin, 2016), the mean WHR of PlayboyPlaymates (0.68) was 2 standard deviations below the means for typical college undergraduates (0.74) and the mean WHR (0.55) of imaginary females chosen for maximal attractiveness from comics, cartoons, animatedfilms, graphic-novels, or video-games was 5 standard deviations below the undergraduate mean. Jessica Rabbit, the most popular imaginary female, has a WHR of 0.42. Preferred values of BMI are also in the negative tail of the actual female distribution: the mean BMI of Playmates (18.5) was 2 SD lower than the mean for college undergraduates (22.2). A recent study of 323female comic book characters from the Marvel universefound that the mean WHR was 0.60±0.07 and the modal BMI was 17; WHR was two SD lower in 34 characters(0.61) than in the actressesportraying themin films (0.72)(Burch & Johnsen, 2019).
1.1 Health and fertility as the basis for female attractiveness?
Singh (1993a, 1993b) suggested that men are attracted to low WHRs and BMIs because they are signs of enhanced female health and fertility, and this idea has been widely accepted (e.g., Grammeret al.,2003; Marloweet al.,2005; Pawlowski&Dunbar,2005; Singh &Singh 2011; Sugiyama, 2005; Tovée et al.,1998; Weeden & Sabini,2005). But thisargument seems inconsistent with the extremity of the preferred values(above). As a result of stabilizing selection, phenotypes associated with optimal health and fertility should, and do,lie at the center—not the extreme—of the female distribution. Given such stabilizing selectionon females, male preferences for traits associated with health and fertility should then target modal female values. Based on a review of a large number of relevant studies and on new analyses, it has been recently shown thatWHRs and BMIs in the negative tails of their distributions—the values rated most attractive in well-nourished populations—usually indicate poorerrather than enhanced health (Lassek&Gaulin,2018a) and lowerfertility (Lassek&Gaulin,2018b)(although lower BMI’sin younger primigravidasmay reduce risksof obstructed labor and hypertension). Given that the predictions of the health-and-fertility hypothesis are not well supported, the main goal of this article is to evaluate theprior hypothesis that maybetter explain why males in well-nourished populations prefer female phenotypes at the negative extreme of their distributions: an evolvedpreference for nubility (Symons 1979, 1995) and its demographic correlate, maximal reproductive value (Andrews et al.,2017; Fessler et al., 2005).
1.2 Nubility as the basis for female attractiveness?
Despite a lack of empirical support, the health-and-fertility hypothesis has largely eclipsed Donald Symons’s earlier proposal thatmen are attracted to nubility—to indicators of recent physical and sexual maturity in young nulligravidas (never pregnant women) (Fessler et al., 2005; Symons,1979;1995; Sugiyama, 2005). Symons defined the nubile phase as 3-5 years after menarche when young women are “just beginning ovulatorymenstrual cycles” but have not been pregnant (Symons.1995, p. 88). This corresponds to age 15-19 in well-nourished populations, but sexual maturityin some subsistence groupsmay be delayed (Ellis,2004; Eveleth&Tanner,1990; Symons 1979). Symons suggested that the female characteristics men find attractive—such as a low WHR—are indicatorsof nubility. And he stressedthat any preference for nubility inevitably contrasts with a preference for current fertility, because the teen years of peak nubility are a well-documented period of lowfertilitydue to a decreased frequency of ovulation,with 40-90% of cycles anovulatory, while maximum fertility is not reached until the mid to late 20’s (Apter,1980; Ashley-Montague,1939; Ellisonet al., 1987; Larsen&Yan,2000; Loucks,2006; Metcalf&Mackenzie,1980; Talwar, 1965; Weinsteinet al., 1990; Wesselink et al., 2017). Thus,if the nubility hypothesis is correct, the fertility hypothesis must be incorrect. Nubility is closely linked to a woman’s maximum reproductive value(RV), her age-specific expectation of future offspring, given the underlying fertility and mortality curves of her population (Fisher,1930). The peak of RV is defined by survival to sexual maturity with all reproductive resources intact. The age of peak RV depends in part on the average ages of menarche and marriage, but typically ranges from 14to 18 in human populations (Fisher,1930;Keyfitz&Caswell, 2005; Keyfitz&Flieger,1971). This corresponds to Symons’ age of nubility. Calculations of reproductive value in the !Kung (Daly & Wilson, 1988) and in South Africa (Bowles & Wilson, 2005) both found the peak age to be 15.Symons argued that the attractiveness of the nubile age group is supported by the finding that this is the age groupwhen marriage and first pregnancies typically occur in subsistence culturesdespite reduced fecundability.For example, in the Yanomamo(polygynous hunter-horticulturalists of southern Venezuela), menarche is typically at age 12, marriage at 14, and the first birth at 16 (Symons,1995). Asimilar relationship between nubility and first reproduction characterizesother subsistence populations(Table 1), wherethe mean age of first birth is typically under age 20 and averages 3.9±1.1years after menarche.Inpopulationswith access toeffectivecontraception,the onset of sexual activity may be a better indicator of nubility than the age of marriage or first birth, although multiple factors may influence these ages. In a 2005 survey of women in 46 countries, the average age of first intercourse ranged from 15 to 19 with a mean of 17.2 (Durex, 2009) and was 17.1 in a recent sample of American women (Finer,2007).
Prior studies suggest that attractive females exhibit the phenotypic correlates of nubility. In the Dobe !Kung, four photographed young women considered “beautiful girls” by the !Kung were all age 17 (Howell, 2000, p. 38).In samplesfrom more developed countries, youthful bodies are also considered attractive. In a study of males viewing nude photos of female infants, children (mean age 7.7), pubescent (mean 13.5), and young adult females (mean 23.1), both viewing duration and ratings of physical attractiveness were highest for pubescent females (Quinseyet al., 1996). Marlowe(1998) has suggested thatan evolved attractionto nubility explains men’s preference for relatively large, firm, non-sagging female breasts, and this view is supported by a study in the Hewa (Coe &Steadman, 1995). Of particular relevance are two studies that directly explore the relationship of attractiveness to age. A recent study using body scans with raters from 10 countries found that BMI was inversely related to both rated attractiveness and to estimated age (Wang et al., 2015). In another recent study, age estimated from neck-down photographs of females in bathing suits had a strong negative relationship with attractiveness and a strong positive relationship with WHR, BMI, and especially waist/stature ratio (Andrews et al., 2017).Symons (1995) suggests several adaptive reasons why selection might favor men preferringnubile females over older females who have higher current fertility: 1) A male who pairs with a nubile female is likely to have the maximum opportunity to sire her offspring during her subsequent most fecund years. A nubile woman is also 2) likely to have more living relatives to assist her than an older woman, and 3) to survive long enough for her children to be independent before her death. 4) A male choosing a nubile female avoids investing in children siredby other men and possible conflict with the mother (his mate) over allocation of her parental effort among his children and the children of her prior mates. By definition, a nubile woman is not investing time and energy in other men’s children because sheis nulliparous.Moreover, in a wide array of competitive situations, those who stake an early claim are likely to have an advantage over those who wait until the contested resource is fully available(e.g., lining up the day before concert ticketsgo on sale; Roth&Xing,1994). Thus,the men who were most strongly attracted to signs of nubility would minimize their chances of being shut out of reproductive opportunities. This dynamic would generate selection on men to seek commitment offemale reproductive potential at younger ages. In such an environment, males without a preference for signs of nubility would be at a disadvantage in mating competition, and those who preferred women at the age of peak fertility (in the mid to late 20s) would likely find few available mates. In subsistence cultures, post-nubile women are very likely to be married and to have children; they are usually either pregnant or nursing and so ovulate infrequently due to ongoing reproductive commitments (Marlowe,2005; Strassman, 1997;Symons,1995).
1.3 External signs of nubility
Following Symons (1979;1995), we consider a woman to be nubile when she has menstrual cycles, has attained maximal skeletal growth, is sexually mature based on Tanner stages (see below), but has not beenpregnant. Maximal skeletal growth and stature are usually attained two to three years after the onset of menstrual periods, the latter typically occurring at ages 12-13 in well nourished populations (Eveleth&Tanner,1990; Table 1). In a representative American sample, completed skeletal growth resulting in maximal stature was attained by age 15-16 (Hamill et al., 1973). The two widely-accepted indicators of female sexual maturity in postmenarcheal women are the attainment of 1)adult breast sizeandconfiguration of the areola and nipple, and 2) an adult pattern of pubic hair (Tanner,1962, Marshall&Tanner,1969). In a sample of 192 English female adolescents, the average age for attaining adult (stage 5) pubic hair was 14.4±1.1 and for adult (stage 5)breasts was 15.3±1.7. More recent samples show similar ages for attainment of breast and pubic hair maturity (Beunenet al., 2006). In other studies, puberty was judged complete by age 16-17 in American, Asian, and Swiss samples (Huanget al., 2004;Largo&Prader,1983;Leeet al., 1980), based on completed skeletal growth and presence of adult secondary sexual characteristics. The timing of these developmental markers supports Symons’ (1979) suggestion that nubility occurs 3 to 5 years after menarche. We will assessthe timing of these developmental indicators in a large U.S. sample.
Little attractiveness research has focused on these features of the developing female phenotype, butSingh (1993b) and Symons (1995) separately suggested that both a low BMIand a low WHR are also indicators of nubility. If so, this developmental pattern would explain the male preference for low BMI and low WHR in populations where both measures increase after the nubile period. Available evidence suggests threeways that low WHRs, BMIs, and small waists may indicate that young women in well-nourished populations are at peak nubility and reproductive value: 1) these measuresare lower in the nubile age group (where nubility is defined based on completed stature growth and attainment of Tanner stage5) than they are in older women, 2) they show that a woman is unlikely to have been pregnant, a requirement for nubility, and 3) they indicate that resources crucial for reproduction are maximal (untapped). Published evidence relevant to these points is reviewed immediately below,and we will offer newevidence that the anthropomorphic values associated with attractiveness and reproductive resources are most likely to occur in the 15-20 age group.
1.3.1 Low WHR and BMI as indicatorsof attainment of sexual maturity
WHR may be a particularly good indicator of nubility because evidence suggests that it reaches a minimum during the nubile period. During female puberty, typically occurringbetween theages 10-18, there is a marked increase in the amount of adipose tissue, e.g., from 12-15% to 25-26% of body weight (Boot et al., 1997, Lim et al., 2009; Taylor et al., 2010), a percentage of body fat far greater than that seen in most other mammals, including other primates (Pond, 1998; Pitts&Bullard, 1968). Under the influence of gonadal hormones, mostof this added adipose is deposited in the gluteofemoral depot (hips, buttocks, and thighs), a highly derived human traitthat may haveevolved to store rare fatty acids critical for the development of the large human brain (Lassek &Gaulin, 2006; 2007;2008). Thishormonally driven emphasis on gluteofemoral vs. abdominal fatstores lowers WHR, which decreases during childhood and early adolescence, reaches a minimum at ages 15 to 18, and then tends to increase (Al-Sendi et al., 2003; Bacopoulou et al., 2015; Casey et al., 1994; de Ridder et al., 1990;1992; Fredriks et al., 2005; Gillum,1999; Haas et al., 2011; Kelishadi et al., 2007; Martinez et al., 1994; Moreno et al., 2007; Taylor et al., 2010; Westrate et al., 1989). This developmental pattern supports the idea that a low WHR is a relatively conspicuous marker of nubility(in addition to other signs of sexual maturity which may be less readily assessable, such as menstruation, breast andpubic-hair development, and attainment of maximal stature).In well-nourished populationsBMIs are also lower in nubile adolescents than in older women. In a longitudinal study of American women that began in the 1930’s, the mean BMI increased from 16.7 kg/m2in early adolescence to 18.9 in late adolescence, 22.1 at age 30, 24.1 at age 40, and 26.1 at age 50 (Casey et al., 1994). Cross-sectional female samples show parallel age-related weight increases (highly correlated with BMI) (Abraham et al., 1979;Burke et al., 1996; Schutz et al., 2002; Stoudt et al., 1965). Controlling for social class and parity, age was a significant predictor of BMI in a large United Kingdom sample (Gulliford et al., 1992). In a study in which males estimated the age of femalefigures varying in BMI and WHR (Singh, 1995), they judged the figures with the lowest BMIs (15) to be the youngest,with an estimated age of 17-19.We will explore the relationship of WHR and BMI with age in a large American sample.However, in contrast to women in well-nourished groups, in subsistence populations women’s BMIs may peak at the age of nubility and subsequently decreasewith age and parity (see Lassek &Gaulin,2006). Notably, men in such populations often prefer the higher BMIs which in these cultures indicate nubility (Sherry &Marlowe 2007, Sugiyama,2005; Yu &Shepard,1998). Thus, a consistent preference for the BMIs most strongly associated with nubility could explain an apparent cross-cultural inconsistency in body-shape preferences,which is difficult to explain using the health-and-fertility hypothesis.
1.3.2 Low WHRs and BMIs and smaller waist sizes indicate a lower likelihood of previous pregnancy
An essential part of Symons’ (1979, 1995) definition of nubility (and the high reproductive value it represents) is the lack of any previous pregnancy(i.e., nulligravidity); nubile womenhaveattained physical and sexual maturity without yet expending any reproductive potential.Priorevidence suggests that a low WHR (or small waist size) is also a strong indicator of nulliparity (Bjorkelund et al., 1996; Gunderson et al., 2004; 2008; 2009; Lanska et al., 1985; Lassek &Gaulin,2006; Lewis et al., 1994; Luoto et al., 2011; Mansour et al., 2009; Rodrigues &Da Costa,2001; Smith et al., 1994; Tonkelaar et al., 1989; Wells et al., 2010). Similarly, a recent study (Butovskya et al., 2017) found a strong positive relationship between WHR and parity in seven traditional societies. Like WHR, BMI also increases with parity in wellnourished populations (Abrams et al., 2013; Bastianet al., 2005;Bobrowet al., 2013; Rodrigues &Da Costa,2001 Kochet al., 2008; Nenkoet al., 2009). Some studies have suggested that BMI may be more strongly related to parity than it is to age (Koch et al., 2008, Nenko et al., 2009), although this may be less true inolder women (Trikudanathanet al., 2013).We will explore the relationships of WHR and BMI to age and parity in a large American sample.In two studies of men’s perceptions, higher WHRs were judged to strongly increase the likelihood of a previous pregnancy (Andrewset al., 2017; Furnham &Reeves, 2006). Thus, anthropometric data suggest that a low WHR and BMI may indicate nulliparity,as well as a young age, and psychological data suggest that men interpret these female features as carrying this information.
1.4 Smaller WHRs and waist sizes indicate greater availability of reproductive resources
Because they have reached sexual maturity but have not yet been pregnant, nubile women should have maximum supplies of reproductive resources that are depleted by pregnancy and nursing, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Many studies have shown that DHA is an important resource supporting neuro-cognitive development ininfants and children(Janssen & Killiaan, 2014; Joffre et al., 2014; Lassek &Gaulin,2014;2015), andDHA stored in adiposeisdepleted by successive pregnancies (Dutta-Roy,2000, Hanebutt et al., 2008; Hornstra,2000; Lassek &Gaulin,2006;2008; Min et al., 2000). Stores of DHA would likely have beenan increasingly important aspect of mate value in the homininlineage as itexperienced dramatic brain expansion.Most of the DHA used for fetal and infant brain development is stored in gluteofemoralfatuntil it is mobilized from this depot during pregnancy and nursing(Lassek &Gaulin, 2006; Rebuffe-Scrive et al., 1985;1987). Indeed,a low WHR is associated with higher circulating levels of DHA (Harris et al., 2012; Karlsson et al., 2006; Micallef et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2008), as isa smaller waist size and lower levels ofabdominal fat(Alsahari et al, 2017; Bender et al., 2014; Howe et al., 2014; Karlsson et al., 2006; Wagner et al., 2015). Thus, young women with smaller waists and WHRs are likely to have higher levels of DHA in their stored fat and so can provide more DHA to their children during pregnancy and nursing which may result in enhanced cognitive ability in their offspring. Consistent with thepossibilitythat female body shape reveals stored neuro-cognitive resources, in a large sample of American mothers those with lower WHRs had children who scored higher on cognitive tests (controlling for other relevant factors, including income and education variables) (Lassek &Gaulin,2008). Moreover, the children ofteenage mothers, at particular risk for cognitive deficits, scoredsignificantly better on cognitive tests when their mothers had lower WHRs. To further examine the reproductive role of the gluteofemoral depot,we will assess the relationship of the waist/thigh ratio to plasma levels of DHA.
Around 75 pct of the minimum wage increase in Hungary was paid by consumers and 25 pct by firm owners; disemployment effects were greater in industries where passing the wage costs to consumers is more difficult
Who Pays for the Minimum Wage? Péter Harasztosi, Attila Lindner. American Economic Review, forthcoming, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20171445&&from=f
Abstract: This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the margins along which firms responded to a large and persistent minimum wage increase in Hungary. We show that employment elasticities are negative but small even four years after the reform; that around 75 percent of the minimum wage increase was paid by consumers and 25 percent by firm owners; that firms responded to the minimum wage by substituting labor with capital; and that dis-employment effects were greater in industries where passing the wage costs to consumers is more difficult. We estimate a model with monopolistic competition to explain these findings.
Abstract: This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the margins along which firms responded to a large and persistent minimum wage increase in Hungary. We show that employment elasticities are negative but small even four years after the reform; that around 75 percent of the minimum wage increase was paid by consumers and 25 percent by firm owners; that firms responded to the minimum wage by substituting labor with capital; and that dis-employment effects were greater in industries where passing the wage costs to consumers is more difficult. We estimate a model with monopolistic competition to explain these findings.
Why "surprising"? --- The Economist: Global meat-eating is on the rise, bringing surprising benefits
All the year round The Economist behaves like the lawmaker, that never speaks without detracting from human knowledge. Now, benefits of eating meat that are surprising:
The way of more flesh
https://www.economist.com/international/2019/05/04/global-meat-eating-is-on-the-rise-bringing-surprising-benefits
Global meat-eating is on the rise, bringing surprising benefits
The Economist, May 2nd 2019| BEIJING, DAKAR AND MUMBAI
As Africans get richer, they will eat more meat and live longer, healthier lives
THINGS WERE different 28 years ago, when Zhou Xueyu and her husband moved from the coastal province of Shandong to Beijing and began selling fresh pork. The Xinfadi agricultural market where they opened their stall was then a small outpost of the capital. Only at the busiest times of year, around holidays, might the couple sell more than 100kg of meat in a day. With China’s economic boom just beginning, pork was still a luxury for most people.
Ms Zhou now sells about two tonnes of meat a day. In between expert whacks of her heavy cleaver, she explains how her business has grown. She used to rely on a few suppliers in nearby provinces. Now the meat travels along China’s excellent motorway network from as far away as Heilongjiang, in the far north-east, and Sichuan, in the south-west. The Xinfadi market has changed, too. It is 100 times larger than when it opened in 1988, and now lies within Beijing, which has sprawled around it.
Between 1961 and 2013 the average Chinese person went from eating 4kg of meat a year to 62kg. Half of the world’s pork is eaten in the country. More liberal agricultural policies have allowed farms to produce more—in 1961 China was suffering under the awful experiment in collectivisation known as the “great leap forward”. But the main reason the Chinese are eating more meat is simply that they are wealthier.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-edition/20190504_IRC006.png]
In rich countries people go vegan for January and pour oat milk over their breakfast cereal. In the world as a whole, the trend is the other way. In the decade to 2017 global meat consumption rose by an average of 1.9% a year and fresh dairy consumption by 2.1%—both about twice as fast as population growth. Almost four-fifths of all agricultural land is dedicated to feeding livestock, if you count not just pasture but also cropland used to grow animal feed. Humans have bred so many animals for food that Earth’s mammalian biomass is thought to have quadrupled since the stone age (see chart).
Barring a big leap forward in laboratory-grown meat, this is likely to continue. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an agency of the UN, estimates that the global number of ruminant livestock (that is, cattle, buffalo, sheep and goats) will rise from 4.1bn to 5.8bn between 2015 and 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario. The population of chickens is expected to grow even faster. The chicken is already by far the most common bird in the world, with about 23bn alive at the moment compared with 500m house sparrows.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/20190504_IRC637.png]
Meanwhile the geography of meat-eating is changing. The countries that drove the global rise in the consumption of animal products over the past few decades are not the ones that will do so in future. Tastes in meat are changing, too. In some countries people are moving from pork or mutton to beef, whereas in others beef is giving way to chicken. These shifts from meat to meat and from country to country are just as important as the overall pattern of growth. They are also more cheering. On a planetary scale, the rise of meat- and dairy-eating is a giant environmental problem. Locally, however, it can be a boon.
Over the past few decades no animal has bulked up faster than the Chinese pig. Annual pork production in that country has grown more than 30-fold since the early 1960s, to 55m tonnes. It is mostly to feed the legions of porkers that China imports 100m tonnes of soybeans every year—two-thirds of trade in that commodity. It is largely through eating more pork and dairy that Chinese diets have come to resemble Western ones, rich in protein and fat. And it is mostly because their diets have altered that Chinese people have changed shape. The average 12-year-old urban boy was nine centimetres taller in 2010 than in 1985, the average girl seven centimetres taller. Boys in particular have also grown fatter.
China’s pork suppliers are swelling, too. Three-fifths of pigs already come from farms that produce more than 500 a year, and Wan Hongjian, vice-president of WH Group Ltd, China’s largest pork producer, thinks the proportion will rise. Disease is one reason. African swine fever, a viral disease fatal to pigs though harmless to people, has swept China and has led to the culling of about 1m hogs. The virus is tough, and can be eradicated only if farms maintain excellent hygiene. Bigger producers are likely to prove better at that.
High on the hog
Yet China’s pork companies are grabbing larger shares of a market that appears almost to have stopped growing. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, estimates that pork consumption in China has been more or less flat since 2014. It predicts growth of just under 1% a year over the next decade. If a country that eats so much of the stuff is indeed approaching peak pork, it hints at a big shift in global animal populations. Pigs will become a smaller presence on the global farm.
In 2015 animal products supplied 22% of the average Chinese person’s calorie intake, according to the FAO. That is only a shade below the average in rich countries (24%). “Unlike decades ago, there are no longer large chunks of the population out there that are not yet eating meat,” says Joel Haggard of the US Meat Export Federation, an industry group. And demography is beginning to prove a drag on demand. China’s population will start falling in about ten years’ time. The country is already ageing, which suppresses food consumption because old people eat less than young people do. UN demographers project that, between 2015 and 2050, the number of Chinese in their 20s will crash from 231m to 139m.
Besides, pork has strong competitors. “All over China there are people eating beef at McDonald’s and chicken at KFC,” says Mr Wan. Another fashion—hotpot restaurants where patrons cook meat in boiling pots of broth at the table—is boosting consumption of beef and lamb. Last year China overtook Brazil to become the world’s second-biggest beef market after America, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Australia exports so much beef to China that the Global Times, a pugnacious state-owned newspaper, has suggested crimping the trade to punish Australia for various provocations.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-edition/20190504_IRC942.png]
The shift from pork to beef in the world’s most populous country is bad news for the environment. Because pigs require no pasture, and are efficient at converting feed into flesh, pork is among the greenest of meats. Cattle are usually much less efficient, although they can be farmed in different ways. And because cows are ruminants, they belch methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. A study of American farm data in 2014 estimated that, calorie for calorie, beef production requires three times as much animal feed as pork production and produces almost five times as much greenhouse gases. Other estimates suggest it uses two and a half times as much water.
Fortunately, even as the Chinese develop the taste for beef, Americans are losing it. Consumption per head peaked in 1976; around 1990 beef was overtaken by chicken as America’s favourite meat. Academics at Kansas State University linked that to the rise of women’s paid work. Between 1982 and 2007 a 1% increase in the female employment rate was associated with a 0.6% drop in demand for beef and a similar rise in demand for chicken. Perhaps working women think beef is more trouble to cook. Beef-eating has risen a little recently, probably because Americans are feeling wealthier. But chicken remains king.
Shifts like that are probably the most that can be expected in rich countries over the next few years. Despite eager predictions of a “second nutrition transition” to diets lower in meat and higher in grains and vegetables, Western diets are so far changing only in the details. Beef is a little less popular in some countries, but chicken is more so; people are drinking less milk but eating more cheese. The EU expects only a tiny decline in meat-eating, from 69.3kg per person to 68.7kg, between 2018 and 2030. Collectively, Europeans and Americans seem to desire neither more animal proteins nor fewer.
If the West is sated, and China is getting there, where is the growth coming from? One answer is India. Although Indians still eat astonishingly little meat—just 4kg a year—they are drinking far more milk, eating more cheese and cooking with more ghee (clarified butter) than before. In the 1970s India embarked on a top-down “white revolution” to match the green one. Dairy farmers were organised into co-operatives and encouraged to bring their milk to collection centres with refrigerated tanks. Milk production shot up from 20m tonnes in 1970 to 174m tonnes in 2018, making India the world’s biggest milk producer. The OECD expects India will produce 244m tonnes of milk in 2027.
All that dairy is both a source of national pride and a problem in a country governed by Hindu nationalists. Hindus hold cows to be sacred. Through laws, hectoring and “cow protection” squads, zealots have tried to prevent all Indians from eating beef or even exporting it to other countries. When cows grow too old to produce much milk, farmers are supposed to send them to bovine retirement homes. In fact, Indian dairy farmers seem to be ditching the holy cows for water buffalo. When these stop producing milk, they are killed and their rather stringy meat is eaten or exported. Much of it goes to Vietnam, then to China (often illegally, because of fears of foot-and-mouth disease).
But neither an Indian milk co-operative nor a large Chinese pig farm really represents the future of food. Look instead to a small, scruffy chicken farm just east of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Some 2,000 birds squeeze into a simple concrete shed with large openings in the walls, which are covered with wire mesh. Though breezes blow through the building, the chickens’ droppings emit an ammoniac reek that clings to the nostrils. A few steps outside, the ground is brown with blood. Chickens have been stuffed into a makeshift apparatus of steel cones to protect their wings, and their necks cut with a knife.
Though it looks primitive, this represents a great advance over traditional west African farming methods. The chickens in the shed hardly resemble the variegated brown birds that can be seen pecking at the ground in any number of villages. They are commercial broilers—white creatures with big appetites that grow to 2kg in weight after just 35 days. All have been vaccinated against two widespread chicken-killers—Newcastle disease and infectious bursal disease. A vet, Mamadou Diouf, checks on them regularly (and chastises the farmers for killing too close to the shed). Mr Diouf says that when he started working in the district, in 2013, many farmers refused to let him in.
Official statistics suggest that the number of chickens in Senegal has increased from 24m to 60m since 2000. As people move from villages to cities, they have less time to make traditional stews—which might involve fish, mutton or beef as well as vegetables and spices, and are delicious. Instead they eat in cafés, or buy food that they can cook quickly. By the roads into Dakar posters advertise “le poulet prêt à cuire”, wrapped in plastic. Broiler farms are so productive that supermarket chickens are not just convenient but cheap.
Economic vegetarians
Many sub-Saharan Africans still eat almost no meat, dairy or fish. The FAO estimates that just 7% of people’s dietary energy comes from animal products, one-third of the proportion in China. This is seldom the result of religious or cultural prohibitions. If animal foods were cheaper, or if people had more money, they would eat more of them. Richard Waite of the World Resources Institute, an American think-tank, points out that when Africans move to rich countries and open restaurants, they tend to write meat-heavy menus.
Yet this frugal continent is beginning to sway the global food system. The UN thinks that the population of sub-Saharan Africa will reach 2bn in the mid-2040s, up from 1.1bn today. That would lead to a huge increase in meat- and dairy-eating even if people’s diets stayed the same. But they will not. The population of Kenya has grown by 58% since 2000, while the output of beef has more than doubled.
Africa already imports more meat each year than does China, and the OECD’s forecasters expect imports to keep growing by more than 3% a year. But most of the continent’s meat will probably be home-grown. The FAO predicts that in 2050 almost two out of every five ruminant livestock animals in the world will be African. The number of chickens in Africa is projected to quadruple, to 7bn.
This will strain the environment. Although African broilers and battery hens are more or less as productive as chickens anywhere, African cattle are the world’s feeblest. Not only are they poorly fed and seldom visited by vets; in many areas they are treated more as stores of wealth than producers of food. Africa has 23% of the world’s cattle but produces 10% of the world’s beef and just 5% of its milk.
Lorenzo Bellù of the FAO points out that herders routinely encroach on national parks and private lands in east Africa. He finds it hard to imagine that the continent’s hunger for meat will be supplied entirely by making farming more efficient. Almost certainly, much forest will be cut down. Other consequences will be global. Sub-Saharan Africans currently have tiny carbon footprints because they use so little energy—excluding South Africa, the entire continent produces about as much electricity as France. The armies of cattle, goats and sheep will raise Africans’ collective contribution to global climate change, though not to near Western or Chinese levels.
The low-productivity horns of Africa
People will probably become healthier, though. Many African children are stunted (notably small for their age) partly because they do not get enough micronutrients such as Vitamin A. Iron deficiency is startlingly common. In Senegal a health survey in 2017 found that 42% of young children and 14% of women are moderately or severely anaemic. Poor nutrition stunts brains as well as bodies.
Animal products are excellent sources of essential vitamins and minerals. Studies in several developing countries have shown that giving milk to schoolchildren makes them taller. Recent research in rural western Kenya found that children who regularly ate eggs grew 5% faster than children who did not; cow’s milk had a smaller effect. But meat—or, rather, animals—can be dangerous, too. In Africa chickens are often allowed to run in and out of people’s homes. Their eggs and flesh seem to improve human health; their droppings do not. One study of Ghana finds that childhood anaemia is more common in chicken-owning households, perhaps because the nippers caught more diseases.
Africans’ changing diets also create opportunities for local businesses. As cities grow, and as people in those cities demand more animal protein, national supply chains become bigger and more sophisticated. Animal breeders, hatcheries, vets and trucking companies multiply. People stop feeding kitchen scraps to animals and start using commercial feed. In Nigeria the amount of maize used for animal-feed shot up from 300,000 tonnes to 1.8m tonnes between 2003 and 2015.
You can see this on the outskirts of Dakar—indeed, the building is so big that you can hardly miss it. NMA Sanders, a feed-mill, turned out some 140,000 tonnes of chicken feed last year, up from 122,000 the year before, according to its director of quality, Cheikh Alioune Konaté. The warehouse floor is piled high with raw ingredients: maize from Morocco, Egypt and Brazil; soya cake from Mali; fishmeal from local suppliers. The mill has created many jobs, from the labourers who fill bags with pelleted feed to the technicians who run the computer system, and managers like Mr Konaté. Lorries come and go.
It is often said that sub-Saharan Africa lacks an industrial base, and this is true. Just one car in every 85 is made in Africa, according to the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. But to look only for high-tech, export-oriented industries risks overlooking the continent’s increasingly sophisticated food-producers, who are responding to urban demand. Ideally, Africa would learn to fill shipping containers with clothes and gadgets. For now, there are some jobs to be had filling bellies with meat.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "A meaty planet"
The way of more flesh
https://www.economist.com/international/2019/05/04/global-meat-eating-is-on-the-rise-bringing-surprising-benefits
Global meat-eating is on the rise, bringing surprising benefits
The Economist, May 2nd 2019| BEIJING, DAKAR AND MUMBAI
As Africans get richer, they will eat more meat and live longer, healthier lives
THINGS WERE different 28 years ago, when Zhou Xueyu and her husband moved from the coastal province of Shandong to Beijing and began selling fresh pork. The Xinfadi agricultural market where they opened their stall was then a small outpost of the capital. Only at the busiest times of year, around holidays, might the couple sell more than 100kg of meat in a day. With China’s economic boom just beginning, pork was still a luxury for most people.
Ms Zhou now sells about two tonnes of meat a day. In between expert whacks of her heavy cleaver, she explains how her business has grown. She used to rely on a few suppliers in nearby provinces. Now the meat travels along China’s excellent motorway network from as far away as Heilongjiang, in the far north-east, and Sichuan, in the south-west. The Xinfadi market has changed, too. It is 100 times larger than when it opened in 1988, and now lies within Beijing, which has sprawled around it.
Between 1961 and 2013 the average Chinese person went from eating 4kg of meat a year to 62kg. Half of the world’s pork is eaten in the country. More liberal agricultural policies have allowed farms to produce more—in 1961 China was suffering under the awful experiment in collectivisation known as the “great leap forward”. But the main reason the Chinese are eating more meat is simply that they are wealthier.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-edition/20190504_IRC006.png]
In rich countries people go vegan for January and pour oat milk over their breakfast cereal. In the world as a whole, the trend is the other way. In the decade to 2017 global meat consumption rose by an average of 1.9% a year and fresh dairy consumption by 2.1%—both about twice as fast as population growth. Almost four-fifths of all agricultural land is dedicated to feeding livestock, if you count not just pasture but also cropland used to grow animal feed. Humans have bred so many animals for food that Earth’s mammalian biomass is thought to have quadrupled since the stone age (see chart).
Barring a big leap forward in laboratory-grown meat, this is likely to continue. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an agency of the UN, estimates that the global number of ruminant livestock (that is, cattle, buffalo, sheep and goats) will rise from 4.1bn to 5.8bn between 2015 and 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario. The population of chickens is expected to grow even faster. The chicken is already by far the most common bird in the world, with about 23bn alive at the moment compared with 500m house sparrows.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/20190504_IRC637.png]
Meanwhile the geography of meat-eating is changing. The countries that drove the global rise in the consumption of animal products over the past few decades are not the ones that will do so in future. Tastes in meat are changing, too. In some countries people are moving from pork or mutton to beef, whereas in others beef is giving way to chicken. These shifts from meat to meat and from country to country are just as important as the overall pattern of growth. They are also more cheering. On a planetary scale, the rise of meat- and dairy-eating is a giant environmental problem. Locally, however, it can be a boon.
Over the past few decades no animal has bulked up faster than the Chinese pig. Annual pork production in that country has grown more than 30-fold since the early 1960s, to 55m tonnes. It is mostly to feed the legions of porkers that China imports 100m tonnes of soybeans every year—two-thirds of trade in that commodity. It is largely through eating more pork and dairy that Chinese diets have come to resemble Western ones, rich in protein and fat. And it is mostly because their diets have altered that Chinese people have changed shape. The average 12-year-old urban boy was nine centimetres taller in 2010 than in 1985, the average girl seven centimetres taller. Boys in particular have also grown fatter.
China’s pork suppliers are swelling, too. Three-fifths of pigs already come from farms that produce more than 500 a year, and Wan Hongjian, vice-president of WH Group Ltd, China’s largest pork producer, thinks the proportion will rise. Disease is one reason. African swine fever, a viral disease fatal to pigs though harmless to people, has swept China and has led to the culling of about 1m hogs. The virus is tough, and can be eradicated only if farms maintain excellent hygiene. Bigger producers are likely to prove better at that.
High on the hog
Yet China’s pork companies are grabbing larger shares of a market that appears almost to have stopped growing. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, estimates that pork consumption in China has been more or less flat since 2014. It predicts growth of just under 1% a year over the next decade. If a country that eats so much of the stuff is indeed approaching peak pork, it hints at a big shift in global animal populations. Pigs will become a smaller presence on the global farm.
In 2015 animal products supplied 22% of the average Chinese person’s calorie intake, according to the FAO. That is only a shade below the average in rich countries (24%). “Unlike decades ago, there are no longer large chunks of the population out there that are not yet eating meat,” says Joel Haggard of the US Meat Export Federation, an industry group. And demography is beginning to prove a drag on demand. China’s population will start falling in about ten years’ time. The country is already ageing, which suppresses food consumption because old people eat less than young people do. UN demographers project that, between 2015 and 2050, the number of Chinese in their 20s will crash from 231m to 139m.
Besides, pork has strong competitors. “All over China there are people eating beef at McDonald’s and chicken at KFC,” says Mr Wan. Another fashion—hotpot restaurants where patrons cook meat in boiling pots of broth at the table—is boosting consumption of beef and lamb. Last year China overtook Brazil to become the world’s second-biggest beef market after America, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Australia exports so much beef to China that the Global Times, a pugnacious state-owned newspaper, has suggested crimping the trade to punish Australia for various provocations.
[https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/640-width/images/print-edition/20190504_IRC942.png]
The shift from pork to beef in the world’s most populous country is bad news for the environment. Because pigs require no pasture, and are efficient at converting feed into flesh, pork is among the greenest of meats. Cattle are usually much less efficient, although they can be farmed in different ways. And because cows are ruminants, they belch methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. A study of American farm data in 2014 estimated that, calorie for calorie, beef production requires three times as much animal feed as pork production and produces almost five times as much greenhouse gases. Other estimates suggest it uses two and a half times as much water.
Fortunately, even as the Chinese develop the taste for beef, Americans are losing it. Consumption per head peaked in 1976; around 1990 beef was overtaken by chicken as America’s favourite meat. Academics at Kansas State University linked that to the rise of women’s paid work. Between 1982 and 2007 a 1% increase in the female employment rate was associated with a 0.6% drop in demand for beef and a similar rise in demand for chicken. Perhaps working women think beef is more trouble to cook. Beef-eating has risen a little recently, probably because Americans are feeling wealthier. But chicken remains king.
Shifts like that are probably the most that can be expected in rich countries over the next few years. Despite eager predictions of a “second nutrition transition” to diets lower in meat and higher in grains and vegetables, Western diets are so far changing only in the details. Beef is a little less popular in some countries, but chicken is more so; people are drinking less milk but eating more cheese. The EU expects only a tiny decline in meat-eating, from 69.3kg per person to 68.7kg, between 2018 and 2030. Collectively, Europeans and Americans seem to desire neither more animal proteins nor fewer.
If the West is sated, and China is getting there, where is the growth coming from? One answer is India. Although Indians still eat astonishingly little meat—just 4kg a year—they are drinking far more milk, eating more cheese and cooking with more ghee (clarified butter) than before. In the 1970s India embarked on a top-down “white revolution” to match the green one. Dairy farmers were organised into co-operatives and encouraged to bring their milk to collection centres with refrigerated tanks. Milk production shot up from 20m tonnes in 1970 to 174m tonnes in 2018, making India the world’s biggest milk producer. The OECD expects India will produce 244m tonnes of milk in 2027.
All that dairy is both a source of national pride and a problem in a country governed by Hindu nationalists. Hindus hold cows to be sacred. Through laws, hectoring and “cow protection” squads, zealots have tried to prevent all Indians from eating beef or even exporting it to other countries. When cows grow too old to produce much milk, farmers are supposed to send them to bovine retirement homes. In fact, Indian dairy farmers seem to be ditching the holy cows for water buffalo. When these stop producing milk, they are killed and their rather stringy meat is eaten or exported. Much of it goes to Vietnam, then to China (often illegally, because of fears of foot-and-mouth disease).
But neither an Indian milk co-operative nor a large Chinese pig farm really represents the future of food. Look instead to a small, scruffy chicken farm just east of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Some 2,000 birds squeeze into a simple concrete shed with large openings in the walls, which are covered with wire mesh. Though breezes blow through the building, the chickens’ droppings emit an ammoniac reek that clings to the nostrils. A few steps outside, the ground is brown with blood. Chickens have been stuffed into a makeshift apparatus of steel cones to protect their wings, and their necks cut with a knife.
Though it looks primitive, this represents a great advance over traditional west African farming methods. The chickens in the shed hardly resemble the variegated brown birds that can be seen pecking at the ground in any number of villages. They are commercial broilers—white creatures with big appetites that grow to 2kg in weight after just 35 days. All have been vaccinated against two widespread chicken-killers—Newcastle disease and infectious bursal disease. A vet, Mamadou Diouf, checks on them regularly (and chastises the farmers for killing too close to the shed). Mr Diouf says that when he started working in the district, in 2013, many farmers refused to let him in.
Official statistics suggest that the number of chickens in Senegal has increased from 24m to 60m since 2000. As people move from villages to cities, they have less time to make traditional stews—which might involve fish, mutton or beef as well as vegetables and spices, and are delicious. Instead they eat in cafés, or buy food that they can cook quickly. By the roads into Dakar posters advertise “le poulet prêt à cuire”, wrapped in plastic. Broiler farms are so productive that supermarket chickens are not just convenient but cheap.
Economic vegetarians
Many sub-Saharan Africans still eat almost no meat, dairy or fish. The FAO estimates that just 7% of people’s dietary energy comes from animal products, one-third of the proportion in China. This is seldom the result of religious or cultural prohibitions. If animal foods were cheaper, or if people had more money, they would eat more of them. Richard Waite of the World Resources Institute, an American think-tank, points out that when Africans move to rich countries and open restaurants, they tend to write meat-heavy menus.
Yet this frugal continent is beginning to sway the global food system. The UN thinks that the population of sub-Saharan Africa will reach 2bn in the mid-2040s, up from 1.1bn today. That would lead to a huge increase in meat- and dairy-eating even if people’s diets stayed the same. But they will not. The population of Kenya has grown by 58% since 2000, while the output of beef has more than doubled.
Africa already imports more meat each year than does China, and the OECD’s forecasters expect imports to keep growing by more than 3% a year. But most of the continent’s meat will probably be home-grown. The FAO predicts that in 2050 almost two out of every five ruminant livestock animals in the world will be African. The number of chickens in Africa is projected to quadruple, to 7bn.
This will strain the environment. Although African broilers and battery hens are more or less as productive as chickens anywhere, African cattle are the world’s feeblest. Not only are they poorly fed and seldom visited by vets; in many areas they are treated more as stores of wealth than producers of food. Africa has 23% of the world’s cattle but produces 10% of the world’s beef and just 5% of its milk.
Lorenzo Bellù of the FAO points out that herders routinely encroach on national parks and private lands in east Africa. He finds it hard to imagine that the continent’s hunger for meat will be supplied entirely by making farming more efficient. Almost certainly, much forest will be cut down. Other consequences will be global. Sub-Saharan Africans currently have tiny carbon footprints because they use so little energy—excluding South Africa, the entire continent produces about as much electricity as France. The armies of cattle, goats and sheep will raise Africans’ collective contribution to global climate change, though not to near Western or Chinese levels.
The low-productivity horns of Africa
People will probably become healthier, though. Many African children are stunted (notably small for their age) partly because they do not get enough micronutrients such as Vitamin A. Iron deficiency is startlingly common. In Senegal a health survey in 2017 found that 42% of young children and 14% of women are moderately or severely anaemic. Poor nutrition stunts brains as well as bodies.
Animal products are excellent sources of essential vitamins and minerals. Studies in several developing countries have shown that giving milk to schoolchildren makes them taller. Recent research in rural western Kenya found that children who regularly ate eggs grew 5% faster than children who did not; cow’s milk had a smaller effect. But meat—or, rather, animals—can be dangerous, too. In Africa chickens are often allowed to run in and out of people’s homes. Their eggs and flesh seem to improve human health; their droppings do not. One study of Ghana finds that childhood anaemia is more common in chicken-owning households, perhaps because the nippers caught more diseases.
Africans’ changing diets also create opportunities for local businesses. As cities grow, and as people in those cities demand more animal protein, national supply chains become bigger and more sophisticated. Animal breeders, hatcheries, vets and trucking companies multiply. People stop feeding kitchen scraps to animals and start using commercial feed. In Nigeria the amount of maize used for animal-feed shot up from 300,000 tonnes to 1.8m tonnes between 2003 and 2015.
You can see this on the outskirts of Dakar—indeed, the building is so big that you can hardly miss it. NMA Sanders, a feed-mill, turned out some 140,000 tonnes of chicken feed last year, up from 122,000 the year before, according to its director of quality, Cheikh Alioune Konaté. The warehouse floor is piled high with raw ingredients: maize from Morocco, Egypt and Brazil; soya cake from Mali; fishmeal from local suppliers. The mill has created many jobs, from the labourers who fill bags with pelleted feed to the technicians who run the computer system, and managers like Mr Konaté. Lorries come and go.
It is often said that sub-Saharan Africa lacks an industrial base, and this is true. Just one car in every 85 is made in Africa, according to the International Organisation of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. But to look only for high-tech, export-oriented industries risks overlooking the continent’s increasingly sophisticated food-producers, who are responding to urban demand. Ideally, Africa would learn to fill shipping containers with clothes and gadgets. For now, there are some jobs to be had filling bellies with meat.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "A meaty planet"
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