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Science 7 September 1979:
Vol. 205. no. 4410, pp. 972 - 977
DOI: 10.1126/science.205.4410.972
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Articles

Demographic Consequences of Incest Tabus: A Microsimulation Analysis

E. A. Hammel 1, C. K. McDaniel 1, and K. W. Wachter 1

1 University of California, Berkeley 94720, are, respectively, professor of anthropology and demography, research assistant in anthropology, and associate professor of demography and statistics

Theories of incest tabus usually stress the psychosocial advantages of marriage regulation. But marriage regulation may produce delays in mating and thus loss of fertility to a population. Computer microsimulation experiments measure the amount of fertility that must be achieved outside a normatively specified marriage system in order to keep population constant. This amount varies directly with scope of tabu and inversely with population size. For populations of hundreds it is negligible, but for populations of dozens it can be very great. In the latter, flexibility of marital arrangements may permit maintenance of fertility without repeated revision of rules of marriage.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Demographic dynamics and kinship in anthropological populations.
E. A. Hammel (2005)
PNAS 102, 2248-2253
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Simulation in Sociology.
B. HALPIN (1999)
American Behavioral Scientist 42, 1488-1508
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)