Human longevity at the cost of reproductive success: evidence from global data

A trade-off between reproduction and somatic maintenance and hence survival is fundamental to life-history theory. We investigated the relationship be tween female fecundity and longevity in Homo sapiens using data from 153 co untries located all over the world. The raw correlation between life span a nd fecundity was highly significant with a negative trend. After longevity and fecundity estimates were controlled for by confounding factors such as historical (i.e. human ethnic groups), religious, geographical, socio-econo mical and parasitological components, we still observed a negative relation ship between the mean female fecundity and the mean longevity in a country. These findings support the hypothesis for the existence of a trade-off bet ween these two key life-history traits in humans, as also reported by a rec ent single longitudinal study in England.