INTERAGE TRANSFERS AND THE ROLE OF THE ELDERLY IN MAYA

University Of California Berkeley, Berkeley CA

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Abstract

This proposed collaborative project pairs a senior economic demographer (lee, PI) with a junior anthropologist/demographer (Kramer, Co-PI) in a study of intergenerational transfers in a group of Maya subsistence agriculturalists in the Yucatan, Mexico. The project will draw on individual-level data, which are based on detailed time use observations and calculations of energetic expenditure and production for various activities from earlier fieldwork by Kramer. The data permit the calculation of resource flows across age within individual households, as well as aggregate age profiles of consumption and production. Additional fieldwork will collect further data on working age adults and older adults. These data will be analyzed in various ways: in conjunction with Lee's mathematical framework for interage transfers; to calculate a matrix of age-specific flows based on individual data; to estimate the effects of demographic composition of the household on labor effort, consumption and interage transfers. These analyses will address the following kinds of questions. Is the net direction of transfers in this group upwards (from younger to older) or downwards? How do patterns compare to those found in other studies (which mostly use less detailed data), and with similar food production systems? Do elders produce more or less than they consume? How does the presence of surviving children and grandchildren affect the work effort of older people? Do older, but still coresident children provide the resources that permit their parents to continue childbearing in their later reproductive years? The answers to these questions will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of age- specific transfer patterns and their changes, the economic role of the elderly, and possibly contribute to the discussion of evolutionary theories of longevity and menopause.