Network Effects of Demographic Transition

Scientific Reports
Tamas David-Barrett

Abstract

Traditional human societies use two of biology's solutions to reduce free-riding: by collaborating with relatives, they rely on the mechanism of kin-selection, and by forming highly clustered social kin-networks, they can efficiently use reputation dynamics. Both of these solutions assume the presence of relatives. This paper shows how social networks change during demographic transition. With falling fertility, there are fewer children that could be relatives to one another. As the missing kin are replaced by non-kin friends, local clustering in the social network drops. This effect is compounded by increasing population size, characteristic of demographic transition. The paper also shows that the speed at which reputation spreads in the network slows down due to both falling fertility and increasing group size. Thus, demographic transition weakens both mechanisms for eliminating free-riders: there are fewer relatives around, and reputation spreads slower. This new link between falling fertility and the altered structure of the social network offers novel interpretations of the origins of legal institutions, the Small World phenomenon, the social impact of urbanisation, and the birds-of-a-feather friendship choice heuristic.

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Citations

Apr 3, 2020·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Valéria RomanoJavier Fernández-López de Pablo
May 21, 2020·Frontiers in Psychology·Michael LaakasuoRobin Dunbar
Mar 19, 2020·Scientific Reports·Tamas David-Barrett
Oct 27, 2020·Evolutionary Anthropology·Abigail E Page, Jennifer C French
Dec 1, 2020·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Jennifer C FrenchFabio Silva

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