DOI: 10.25349/d90k59
title: Data from: Mother's social status is associated with child health in a horticulturalist population

description: High social status is often associated with greater mating opportunities
 and fertility for men, but do women also obtain fitness benefits of high
 status? Greater resource access and child survivorship may be principal
 pathways through which social status increases women’s fitness. Here we
 examine whether peer-rankings of women’s social status (indicated by
 political influence, project leadership and respect) positively covaries
 with child nutritional status and health in a community of Amazonian
 horticulturalists. We find that maternal political influence, but not
 fathers’,  is associated with improved child health outcomes in
 models adjusting for maternal age, parental height and weight, level of
 schooling, household income, family size, and number of co-resident kin in
 the community. Children of politically influential women have higher
 weight-for-age (B=0.33; 95% CI= 0.12 – 0.54), height-for-age (B=0.32;
 95%CI=0.10 – 0.54), and weight-for-height (B= 0.24; 95% CI=0.04 – 0.44),
 and they are less likely to be diagnosed with common illnesses (OR= 0.48;
 95% CI= 0.31 – 0.76). These results are consistent with women leveraging
 their social status to enhance reproductive success through improvements
 in child health. We discuss these results in light of parental investment
 theory and the implications for the evolution of female social status in
 humans.
description: <b><i>Social status</i></b>. All resident
 adults in the village of study were rated by peers on three dimensions of
 social status: political influence, project leadership and respect. Six
 women and six men from the village were randomly selected as raters and
 were asked to evaluate photographs of community members, for each of the
 following questions: 1) “Whose voice carries the most weight during
 community debates?” (“political influence”); 2) “Who knows how to manage
 community projects?” (“project leadership”); and 3) “Who receives more
 respect in the village?” (“respect”). Men and women’s photographs were
 included in the same array and evaluated together by each
 rater.   <b><i>Child
 health</i></b>. From 2012 to 2016, as part of the Tsimane
 Health and Life History Project’s (THLHP) focus on health, growth and
 development, team physicians collected anthropometric measurements and
 diagnosed children’s illnesses during annual or biannual medical exams. Of
 the men and women whose social status measures were collected in 2014, 47
 women and men had children aged 0 to 16 years who had been evaluated by
 the THLHP between 2012 and 2016, and who were included in our dataset
 resulting in 342 observations. Children’s standing and sitting height were
 measured without shoes to the nearest millimeter with a portable Seca 213
 stadiometer. Weight was measured with a Tanita BF-572 scale in light
 clothing without shoes. Anthropometric measurements were used to assess
 population-specific z-scores (<i>sensu</i> [35]; localgrowth R
 package: https://github.com/adblackwell/localgrowth) for 1) weight-for-age (indicator of low weight), 2) height-for-age (indicator of stunting), and 3) weight-for-height (indicator of wasting). Using bilingual (Spanish-Tsimane) research assistants, physicians also diagnosed children’s illnesses using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Clinical diagnoses were binary (disease present or absent) and grouped into three categories reflecting common illnesses: gastrointestinal diseases , respiratory infections and anemia. <b><i>Socio-demographics</i></b>. Demographic data used to determine kinship, age and live births per woman at the time of the child’s medical visit come from reproductive histories collected from 2003-2005 and updated annually thereafter. In interviews conducted by lead authors in 2014, parents also reported their years of schooling and income over the past year.  Child's age, maternal age, and all parental attributes were standardized in our analysis. Household income was logged then standardized.
description: Given that the dataset contains over three measures that can be
 potentially used to indirectly identify study participants, we have
 z-scored all variables in our published dataset. 19
 missing values for mothers'height and weight, and # livebirths at
 time of medical visit 8 missing values for
 fathers'weight 45 missing values for child
 clinical diagnoses