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An association between women's physical attractiveness and the length of their reproductive career in a prospectively longitudinal nationally representative sample
Author(s) -
Kanazawa Satoshi
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
american journal of human biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.559
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1520-6300
pISSN - 1042-0533
DOI - 10.1002/ajhb.23256
Subject(s) - menarche , attractiveness , demography , longitudinal study , odds , mating , menopause , physical attractiveness , fertility , sample (material) , psychology , medicine , biology , logistic regression , population , ecology , endocrinology , sociology , chemistry , pathology , chromatography , psychoanalysis
A bstract Objectives Why is physical attractiveness more important for women's mate value in long‐term mating than in short‐term mating? This article replicates Bovet et al.'s ( Journal of Evolutionary Biology . 2018; 31:229–238) recent finding that physically attractive women have a later expected age of menopause. Methods I analyzed the prospectively longitudinal, nationally representative sample of women in the National Child Development Study, applying t ‐test and multiple regression analyses. Results Analyses showed that girls rated physically attractive at age 7 underwent menarche 3.12 months earlier than other girls, and they had 32% smaller odds of having undergone menopause before age 51. The results suggest that more physically attractive women have longer reproductive careers, explaining why physical attractiveness may be a more important determinant of women's mate value in long‐term mating than in short‐term mating. Conclusions Women's physical attractiveness predicts the timing of menarche and menopause, thereby the length of their reproductive careers.