This article tests a broad hypothesis that marital structure is associated with economic type. Results indicate that where women's potential contribution to subsistence is high (as in gathering and agricultural societies), women's contribution is positively associated with polygyny. By contrast, in fishing, hunting, and herding societies, female contribution to subsistence is generally minimal and has a negative association with polygyny.

This article examines the relationships between family structure, type of mate-selection system, and romantic love as a basis for mate-selection. Analysis indicates that autonomous mate selection is more common in societies with nuclear family structure and neolocal residence patterns. Romantic love as a basis for mate selection is also more common with nuclear family organization, but it is negatively associated with neolocal residence patterns.

This article reviews theories of marital power and tests for a relationship between wives’ contribution to subsistence and their conjugal power in patriarchal cultures. Results indicate a positive association. The role of cultural complexity is also considered; its relationship with wives’ power is negative and linear while its relationship with wives’ contribution to subsistence is negative and non-linear.

This article examines the status of the elderly cross-culturally, proposing that familial complexity, unlineal descent, and unilocal residence are predictors of high status. The authors theorize that elderly male status will be highest in patrilineal and patrilocal societies; elderly female status will be highest in matrilineal and matrilocal societies. Some support is found for these patterns, but the authors ultimately regard them as too simple to adequately predict status of the elderly.

This article investigates how status of the elderly is affected by economic type, family organization, inheritance of real property, and unilocal residence patterns. Multivariate analysis ultimately suggests that agricultural economy, patrilocal residence, and fully extended family systems are significant predictors of higher status of the elderly. No major gender differences were discovered.

This article explores the hypothesis that certain initiation and child-rearing patterns are integrated by virtue of the fact that the child rearing creates a specific kind of problem personality that the initiation counteracts. Early indulgence followed by compliance child training is explored in the Hopi culture, and similar patterns are examined in a sample of societies.

This article proposes that integrative differences mediate the relationship between demographic size and political complexity. Hypotheses are supported by a review of previous literature.

This article explores the relationship between language structure and social environment, positing that linguistic factors such as morphological complexity are associated with demographic/socio-historical factors such as number of speakers, geographic spread, and degree of language contact. Data support such an association. The authors further propose a Linguistic Niche Hypothesis suggesting that “the level of morphological specialization is a product of languages adapting to the learning constraints and the unique communicative needs of the speaker population” (7).

This study investigates a material explanation for the practice of twin infanticide. Empirical analysis suggests that twin infanticide is more likely where women lack sufficient facilities to rear two infants while fulfilling her other responsibilities.

This study posits that dowry is a recent historical development, and that cultural complexity is a necessary but not sufficient cause for its emergence. Comparisons of frequencies support these claims.