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. 2015 Dec 17;10(12):e0144353.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0144353. eCollection 2015.

The Trade-Off between Female Fertility and Longevity during the Epidemiological Transition in the Netherlands

Ralf Kaptijn  1 , Fleur Thomese  1 , Aart C Liefbroer  1   2   3 , Frans Van Poppel  2 , David Van Bodegom  4 , Rudi G J Westendorp  4   5
Affiliations

The Trade-Off between Female Fertility and Longevity during the Epidemiological Transition in the Netherlands

Ralf Kaptijn et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the relationship between women's fertility and their post-reproductive longevity. In this study, we focus on the disposable soma theory, which posits that a negative relationship between women's fertility and longevity can be understood as an evolutionary trade-off between reproduction and survival. We examine the relationship between fertility and longevity during the epidemiological transition in the Netherlands. This period of rapid decline in mortality from infectious diseases offers a good opportunity to study the relationship between fertility and longevity, using registry data from 6,359 women born in The Netherlands between 1850 and 1910. We hypothesize that an initially negative relationship between women's fertility and their longevity gradually turns less negative during the epidemiological transition, because of decreasing costs of higher parities. An initially inversed U-shaped association between fertility and longevity changes to zero during the epidemiological transition. This does suggest a diminishing environmental pressure on fertility. However, we find no evidence of an initial linear trade-off between fertility and post-reproductive survival.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Age-standardized mortality from infectious diseases for men and women in the Netherlands.
Source: Statline Database Statistics Netherlands (statline.cbs.nl).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Trends in life expectancy at age 50, by gender and age cohort, among the HSN sample and the population (for HSN mean, lower and upper confidence interval).
Sources: HSN (own calculation), and Statline Database Statistics Netherlands (statline.cbs.nl).
Fig 3
Fig 3. Mean survival time (in years) after age 50, for ever-married women and men, by parity (mean, lower and upper confidence interval).
Note. The number of cases varied between 752 and 2246 per category.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Trends in mortality rate by period across cohorts, based on Model 2 in Table 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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