Collaborative Research: The Anthropology of Demographic Transition and Livelihood Diversification

合作研究：人口转型和生计多样化的人类学

• 批准号: 2222262
• 负责人: Siobhán Mattison
• 金额: $ 38.51万
• 依托单位: University of New Mexico
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2222262&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Anthropology; Demographic; Transition

The average size of human families has dropped dramatically over the last several decades. This affects families’ abilities to meet household needs and the welfare of family members adopting different subsistence roles. Given the implications of such demographic transitions for individual, family, and societal well-being, changes in family size have been intensively studied, and yet remain poorly resolved, particularly within contexts where relatively large family sizes remain normative. This research project uses theory from cultural and biological anthropology to understand the role that livelihood diversification may play in driving family size in mixed (subsistence and market) economies. It creates new collaborations among minority-serving institutions and research-intensive institutions, offers significant, fully remunerated training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, including in field, laboratory, and computational methods, and supports both early career and underrepresented scholars. It disseminates results broadly to stakeholder communities and to academic and non-academic audiences via scholarly presentations and publications and a variety of public-oriented media outlets.This project tests the hypothesis that the need to diversify livelihoods in contexts with mixed economies is associated with larger family sizes than are predicted under typical models of demographic transition. Its first objective is to test whether and how economic and cultural factors influence ideal and realized family sizes. Its second is to investigate how family size affects children’s daily activities, both productive and consumptive, and how activity profiles influence children’s nutrition, energetics, physical fitness, and well-being. To do so, investigators collect data from a large sample of children residing in market-integrated, mixed, and subsistence economies, including data drawn from socio-demographic questionnaires that characterize livelihoods and cultural norms surrounding family size, physical activity and dietary logs, and anthropometric and biomarker assessments of health. Together, these data provide a much more detailed assessment of the patterns, causes, and consequences of family size variation as affected by variation in economic and cultural factors. Results thus inform missing aspects of demographic transition theory by focusing on the proximate means by which families adjust subsistence strategies to accommodate variation in economic and cultural landscapes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在过去几十年里，人类家庭的平均规模急剧下降。这影响到家庭满足家庭需要的能力和承担不同生计角色的家庭成员的福利。鉴于这种人口结构转变对个人、家庭和社会福祉的影响，人们对家庭规模的变化进行了深入研究，但仍然没有得到很好的解决，特别是在相对较大的家庭规模仍然是规范的情况下。该研究项目使用文化和生物人类学的理论来理解生计多样化在混合（生存和市场）经济中推动家庭规模方面可能发挥的作用。它在少数群体服务机构和研究密集型机构之间建立了新的合作，为本科生和研究生提供了重要的全薪培训机会，包括实地，实验室和计算方法，并支持早期职业和代表性不足的学者。该项目通过学术报告和出版物以及各种面向公众的媒体渠道，向利益攸关方社区、学术界和非学术界受众广泛传播研究结果，检验以下假设：在混合经济体中，生计多样化的必要性与家庭规模大于人口转型典型模式下预测的家庭规模有关。其第一个目标是检验经济和文化因素是否以及如何影响理想的和实际的家庭规模。其次是调查家庭规模如何影响儿童的日常活动，包括生产和消费，以及活动概况如何影响儿童的营养，精力充沛，身体健康和幸福。为此，调查人员从居住在市场一体化，混合和自给自足经济体的儿童的大样本中收集数据，包括从社会人口调查问卷中提取的数据，这些问卷描述了围绕家庭规模，身体活动和饮食日志的生计和文化规范，以及人体测量和生物标志物健康评估。总之，这些数据提供了一个更详细的评估模式，原因和家庭规模变化的影响，在经济和文化因素的变化的后果。因此，通过关注家庭调整生存策略以适应经济和文化景观变化的直接手段，结果为人口转型理论的缺失方面提供了信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。