The greater the economic inequality, the later people have children: The association between economic inequality and reproductive timing

Abstract

M. (2020). The greater the economic inequality, the later people have children: The association between economic inequality and reproductive timing. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 61, 450-459.Economic inequality is associated with a series of social outcomes, including health, social trust, and crime rates. However, little is known about the role of economic inequality as a characteristic of the socioecological environment in individuals' reproductive behavior. According to embodied capital theory, this research explored how individuals calibrate their reproductive timing to maximize payoffs to investment in embodied capital in an environment of high economic inequality. Five studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that higher economic inequality leads people to delay reproduction. Across nations (Study 1), we found that the average reproductive age is higher in nations with greater economic inequality. Study 2 found that people living in more economically unequal U.S. states tend to marry later. In Study 3, individuals who perceived higher levels of inequality in a given society planned to have their children later. Finally, in Study 4, the priming of high inequality led to a greater preference for delaying reproduction, which represented a desire to pursue one's development rather than to build a family (Study 4a and 4b). These results expand the literature regarding the effect of economic inequality on human behavior.Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of the article: Figure S1. Three options for each income level for each necessity.

Beware of the ‘Bad Guys’: Economic Inequality, Perceived Competition, and Social Vigilance

“…Participants were asked to imagine that they had arrived in a fictitious society called Bimboola (Cheng et al, 2020;Sánchez-Rodríguez et al, 2019a). In Bimboola, residents' income was generally divided into three levels (see Figure 2).…”