Risk-sensitive Decision Making: Subsistence Diversification in Response to Novel Environments

风险敏感决策：应对新环境的生存多样化

• 批准号: 1632338
• 负责人: Karen Kramer
• 金额: $ 21.46万
• 依托单位: University of Utah
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1632338&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Risk; sensitive; Decision; Making; Subsistence

This project conducts a natural experiment to ask how inequality arises out of an unstratified economy, and which traits preadapt certain individuals and groups to differentially succeed under economic diversification. Rapid social and economic change offer many new opportunities that are of possible benefit to individuals. However, adopting new modes of social organization and ways of making a living are also risky because traditional knowledge may be inadequate when evaluating the costs and benefits of pursuing unfamiliar behaviors. This situation is widespread in many societies encountering new markets. This process, which is currently poorly understood, is of particular importance because social and wealth inequality emerge as a result of market access. Thus, here we seek to learn, when novel opportunities are introduced, why are some individuals and families better able to take advantage of the situation, while others try and fail or continue to rely on traditional and conservative lifeways? The negative impact of income inequality is of growing concern both in both the popular press and academic literature because of its associations with quality of life indicators, including patterns of health, education and aging. To answer the question of how inequality emerges within a group of people, and to address broader concerns regarding its negative impacts, University of Utah researchers Drs. Karen L. Kramer and Ryan Schacht will work with a group of rural Maya. This study population provides an ideal opportunity to explore the emergence and consequences of inequality for two key reasons: 1) the Maya have only recently had regular access to wage labor and economic markets and are just beginning to show signs of inequality in wealth, health, and education; 2) working with the Maya helps the researchers to account for many of the confounding factors that confuse a clear interpretation of associations between inequality and negative outcomes in the West. The researchers will test the hypothesis that risk orientation is a key determinant for the emergence of inequality. The central prediction is that preexisting variation in kin and non-kin network size affects risk orientation and subsequently facilitates the differential accumulation of wealth (land, consumer goods, cash, education, health) by some more than others. The project integrates a network and risk sensitivity approach to study decision-making under diversifying socioeconomic conditions. Their research findings will offer insight not only to the consequences looming for many small-scale societies currently undergoing economic and wealth transitions, but also to industrialized populations experiencing ever increasing levels of wealth inequality.

该项目进行了一项自然实验，以探究非分层经济中的不平等是如何产生的，以及哪些特征可以预先适应某些个人和群体在经济多元化下取得不同的成功。快速的社会和经济变革提供了许多可能对个人有利的新机会。然而，采用新的社会组织模式和谋生方式也存在风险，因为在评估追求不熟悉行为的成本和收益时，传统知识可能不够充分。这种情况在许多遇到新市场的社会中很普遍。目前人们对这一过程知之甚少，但这一过程尤为重要，因为市场准入会导致社会和财富不平等。因此，在这里我们试图了解，当新的机会出现时，为什么一些个人和家庭能够更好地利用这种情况，而另一些人则尝试但失败或继续依赖传统和保守的生活方式？ 收入不平等的负面影响越来越受到大众媒体和学术文献的关注，因为它与生活质量指标（包括健康、教育和老龄化模式）相关。为了回答不平等在一群人中如何出现的问题，并解决对其负面影响的更广泛的担忧，犹他大学的研究人员博士。凯伦·克莱默 (Karen L. Kramer) 和瑞安·沙赫特 (Ryan Schacht) 将与一群农村玛雅人合作。这项研究人群提供了一个理想的机会来探讨不平等的出现和后果，原因有两个：1）玛雅人最近才定期进入工资劳动力和经济市场，并且刚刚开始在财富、健康、和教育； 2）与玛雅人的合作有助于研究人员解释许多混淆因素，这些因素混淆了对西方不平等与负面结果之间关系的明确解释。研究人员将检验风险导向是不平等出现的关键决定因素这一假设。中心预测是，亲属和非亲属网络规模中预先存在的差异会影响风险取向，并随后促进某些人比其他人更多地进行财富（土地、消费品、现金、教育、健康）的差异积累。该项目整合了网络和风险敏感性方法来研究多元化社会经济条件下的决策。他们的研究结果不仅将为目前正在经历经济和财富转型的许多小规模社会带来的后果提供见解，而且还将为正在经历日益严重的财富不平等的工业化人口提供见解。

项目成果

Scaling climate change to human behavior predicting good and bad years for Maya farmers

将气候变化与人类行为联系起来，预测玛雅农民的好年景和坏年景

• DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23524
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: American Journal of Human Biology
• 影响因子: 2.9
• 作者: Kramer, Karen L.;Hackman, Joseph
• 通讯作者: Hackman, Joseph

Infant allocare in traditional societies

• DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.02.054
• 发表时间: 2018-09-01
• 期刊: PHYSIOLOGY & BEHAVIOR
• 影响因子: 2.9
• 作者: Kramer, Karen L.;Veile, Amanda
• 通讯作者: Veile, Amanda

Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth

儿子和女儿财富代际传承的差异

• DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0076
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London
• 作者: Borgerhoff Mulder, M

Cesarean birth and the growth of Yucatec Maya and Toba/Qom children

• DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23228
• 发表时间: 2019-03
• 期刊: American Journal of Human Biology
• 影响因子: 2.9
• 作者: A. Veile;C. Valeggia;K. Kramer

Kinship ties across the lifespan in human communities

• DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0069
• 发表时间: 2019-09-02
• 期刊: PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
• 影响因子: 6.3
• 作者: Koster, Jeremy;Lukas, Dieter;Massengill, Eric
• 通讯作者: Massengill, Eric