Who Helps and Why?

Kasper, Claudia; Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff

doi:10.1086/683024

Cited by 61 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 125 publications

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“…It is often argued that these strong kinship ties have endured in sub-Saharan Africa because of high levels of poverty and the absence of a public safety net to protect vulnerable individuals. However, some work suggested that these bonds have weakened in response to growing urbanization, increased mobility, and resource scarcity (Kasper & Borgerhoff Mulder, 2015). Others have pointed to the declining importance of parents and kin in selecting a spouse for their sons and daughters (Hakansson, 1994;Smith, 2011).…”

Section: The Size and Strength Of Kinship Network In Sub-saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several characteristics of single mothers are likely to influence their need for financial support and supplemental child care. Mothers with little education, low household income, and few household assets are presumably in greatest need of financial assistance and, hence, more likely to receive support from kin (Kasper & Borgerhoff Mulder, 2015). The relationship between socioeconomic status and the need for child care may be more complex.…”

Section: Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Kin Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Limited resources may inspire competition rather than cooperation among kin (Borgerhoff Mulder, 2007;Kasper & Borgerhoff Mulder, 2015;Strassmann & Garrard, 2011). One study among the Kipsigis of Kenya found that wealthier kin were better able to ensure the survival of children than poorer kin (Borgerhoff Mulder, 2007), but another study in rural Tanzania showed that transfers among kin were lowest among the wealthiest individuals (Kasper & Borgerhoff Mulder, 2015).Whether kin are working is presumably one of the strongest predictors of providing financial transfers, although it may not be related to the provision of child care. Instead, child care may depend on the kin member's age because older relatives may find physical child care too taxing (Nyambedha et al, 2003).…”

Section: Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Kin Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who Helps Single Mothers in Nairobi? The Role of Kin Support

Clark

Madhavan

Cotton

et al. 2017

J of Marriage and Family

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Single mothers often turn to their extended kin for financial assistance and to help with child care. Such support may be especially important in areas of high poverty and poor environmental conditions. Using novel kinship data, this paper assesses the extent of support given by over 3,000 relatives to 462 single mothers living in a slum area of Nairobi, Kenya. Contrary to stereotypes about families in sub-Saharan Africa, the active kin network of single mothers is relatively small and nearly a fifth of mothers do not receive any financial or child care assistance. Different types of kin offer different kinds of support according to culturally proscribed roles. However, support also depends heavily on kin’s employment status, geographic proximity, and age. These findings offer a nuanced picture of how single women living in slum areas draw upon their kin network to cope with their daily demands as mothers.

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Section: The Size and Strength Of Kinship Network In Sub-saharan Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Kin Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Socioeconomic Factors Influencing Kin Supportmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Who Helps Single Mothers in Nairobi? The Role of Kin Support

Clark

Madhavan

Cotton

et al. 2017

J of Marriage and Family

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“…Indirect reciprocity in humans is likely supported by our capacity for language to pass on information (Nowak and Sigmund, 2005), inclinations to spread gossip (N. Henrich and Henrich, 2007), concern with reputation (D. Karlan and McConnell, 2014;Milinski, 2016) and sympathy for people who do good to others (Bereczkei et al, 2007). There is evidence from laboratory experiments and field studies that humans reciprocate directly (Dal Bó and Fréchette, 2018;Fischbacher et al, 2001;Gurven, 2006;Kasper and Borgerhoff Mulder, 2015) and indirectly (Diekmann et al, 2014;Seinen and Schram, 2006;Wedekind and Braithwaite, 2002).…”

Section: Prior Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Banking on cooperation: An evolutionary analysis of microfinance loan repayment behaviour

Gehrig

Mesoudi

Lamba

2019

Preprint

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Microfinance is an economic development intervention that involves credit provision to low-income entrepreneurs in order to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty. Lenders typically require joint liability, where borrowers share the responsibility of repaying a group loan. We argue that this lending practice is subject to a fundamental cooperation problem similar to that faced by humans and other organisms in nature across many domains, and that consequently evolutionary theories of cooperation from the biological sciences can provide new insights into loan repayment behaviour. This could both inform the design of microfinance institutions, and offer a real-world test case for evolutionary theories of cooperation. We first formulate hypotheses on group loan repayment based on the evolutionary literature on cooperation. We then assess these hypotheses by reviewing 40 studies on micro-borrowers’ loan repayment from 31 countries, evaluating which characteristics of borrowers are associated with credit repayment discipline. We find more supportive than contrary evidence for the hypotheses, but results are generally mixed, generating avenues for future research within this framework. Our work shows how understanding the evolution of cooperation can guide economic development interventions that build on “social capital” and, more generally, offer ultimate explanatory theories for phenomena studied by social scientists.

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“…Many factors may contribute to an individual's social preferences, including their sentiments-their attitudes and emotions towards particular people [32] (see also [33,34])-and their assets, such as their perceived socioeconomic status [28] and their housing and food security [35]. Importantly, individuals cannot always act according to their private preferences in real life due to constraints on their behavior from cultural institutions (e.g., moral culture, such as notions of what makes someone good or bad [36]) and social obligations (e.g., when money is requested, one must share [37,38]). In other words, social structure constrains an individual's agency with consequences, foregrounding some preferences and masking others [39].…”

Section: Altering Classical Games To Answer New Questions 21 a Privamentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences and constraints: The value of economic games for studying human sociality

Pisor

Gervais

Purzycki

et al. 2018

Preprint

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We argue that classic economic games and their more recent extensions should continue to play a role in fieldworkers’ methodological toolkits. Economic games are not replacements for observational and self-report studies of behavior, but rather complements to them: While observational and self-report data measure individuals’ behavior subject to the constraints of cultural institutions, competing demands on their resources, and even self-presentation bias, economic games can be designed to measure comparatively unconstrained individual preferences, or to selectively introduce constraints, providing insight into how individuals would behave under certain conditions if they had the opportunity. By using a combination of experiments, observation, and self-report, anthropologists, economists, and psychologists can continue to improve their understanding of how preferences translate into “real world” behavior, and how “real world” constraints influence preferences, across diverse human societies.

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Who Helps and Why?

Cited by 61 publications

References 125 publications

Who Helps Single Mothers in Nairobi? The Role of Kin Support

Who Helps Single Mothers in Nairobi? The Role of Kin Support

Banking on cooperation: An evolutionary analysis of microfinance loan repayment behaviour

Preferences and constraints: The value of economic games for studying human sociality

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