Charlie Bucket effect datasets

Data used in the article

One but not two grandmothers increased child survival in poorer families in west Bohemian population

Human childrearing is characterized by cooperative care and grandmothers are usually the most prominent alloparents. Nevertheless, it has been argued that limited resources may intensify competition among kin. The effect of grandmothers’ presence on child survival may thus crucially depend on the family’s socioeconomic status. We evaluate the impact of grandmothers’ presence on child survival using a large historical dataset from eighteenth to nineteenth-century western Bohemia (N = 6880) and assess the effects of socioeconomic status. We employed a varying effects model conditioned on relatedness between individuals because of possible genetically transmitted benefits. Proportional hazards showed that grandmothers had little or no impact on child survival in families of high and medium socioeconomic status (farmers and cottagers, respectively), while in families with the lowest socioeconomic status (lodgers), grandmothers’ presence increased the survival probability of children up to five years of age. The beneficial effect of grandmaternal care was strongest between the first and second year of life. Importantly, though, in families with low socioeconomic status, we also observed lower survival chances of children when both grandmothers lived in the same village. These findings suggest that the balance between kin cooperation in childrearing and competition over resources may depend on resource availability.

Methods
The data were digitalized from historical curch records by a group of experts led by Alice Velková. The parent-children pairs were identified on the basis of names, residence sites and dates of births/deaths. Incomplete or corrupted data were excluded. Details can be found in the manuscript or on a GitHub page: https://github.com/costlysignalling/CharlieBucket

See attached scripts for the complete analysis and data handling record.