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- Title
Height and Reproductive Success.
- Authors
Sear, Rebecca
- Abstract
In Western societies, height is positively correlated with reproductive success (RS) for men but negatively correlated with RS for women. These relationships have been attributed to sexual selection: women prefer tall men, and men prefer short women. It is this success in the marriage market which leads to higher RS for tall men and short women. We have already shown that the relationship between height and RS for women is quite different in a non-Western context. In a subsistence farming community in rural Gambia, height is positively correlated with reproductive success for women, largely owing to the higher survival of the children of tall women. Here, the relationship between height and reproductive success is analyzed for men in the same community. For these Gambian men, there is no significant relationship between height and the number of children they produce, although tall men do contract more marriages than shorter men. We conclude that environmental context needs to be taken into account when analyzing human reproductive behavior.
- Subjects
GAMBIA; STATURE; SEX customs; SEXUAL attraction; WESTERN society; MAN-woman relationships; FEAR of success; SURVIVAL behavior (Animals); GAMBIANS
- Publication
Human Nature, 2006, Vol 17, Issue 4, p405
- ISSN
1045-6767
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s12110-006-1003-1