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An Evolutionary Account of Status, Power, and Career in Modern Societies

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Abstract

We hypothesize that in modern societies the striving for high positions in the hierarchy of organizations is equivalent to the striving for status and power in historical and traditional societies. Analyzing a sample of 4,491 US men and 5,326 US women, we find that holding a supervisory position or being in charge of hiring and firing is positively associated with offspring count in men but not in women. The positive effect in men is attributable mainly to the higher proportion of childlessness among men in non-supervisory positions and those without the power to hire and fire. This effect is in accordance with the positive relationship between other status indicators and reproductive success found in men from traditional, historical, and modern societies. In women, we further find a curvilinear relationship between income percentile and offspring number by analyzing US census data, indicating that women may strive for resources associated with advancement rather than for status per se.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and IPUMS for providing the data (IPUMS USA: Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek). We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which improved the paper substantially.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Althanstr. 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Martin Fieder

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Althanstr. 14, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Susanne Huber

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  1. Martin Fieder
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  2. Susanne Huber
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Correspondence to Martin Fieder.

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Fieder, M., Huber, S. An Evolutionary Account of Status, Power, and Career in Modern Societies. Hum Nat 23, 191–207 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-012-9139-7

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