It is known that people from wealthy families tend to have fewer children and that culture has a tendency to be associated with large or small families. Since this study only looked at ‘poor’ families the wealthy family situation would probably not apply although I would like to know the definition of ‘poor’ used here. I admit I know nothing about the culture of 18th century Finland so a description of the usual number of children in the families involved would be helpful.

Thank you to the above commenter (Dr. O’) for your interest in our study. We did look at individuals born into rich (landowning) families as well as those born into poor (landless) families. We did not find any relationship between early life food availability and reproductive success in individuals born into landowning families. This was one prediction of our study, as landowning families would have been less influenced by variation in local food availability than those with more resources, and so any long-term effects of the early environment would be lessened.

We measured reproductive success as a binary outcome indicating whether or not someone produced a child in their lifetime. Therefore a smaller number of children being produced by richer individuals would not account for this difference. In any case, family size was actually larger for individuals born into landowning families than in landless families in 18th and 19th century Finland.

If you would like further information please feel free to contact me and I will be glad to assist: i.rickard@sheffield.ac.uk