Little support for a strong genetic fertility–lifespan trade-off
In Dutch family records, the genetic correlation between offspring number and lifespan was minus 0.10 in women and near zero or weakly positive in men.
Limit: Analyses selected survivors to 45, and reproductive analyses excluded unmarried people and childless people
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Researchers studied women and men born between 1850 and 1915 in an observational analysis of Dutch family records. They used family relationships to estimate inherited influences on lifespan, number of children and ages at first and last birth. They analyzed the sexes separately among people who survived to at least 45, with parallel analyses of those who survived beyond 13.
Genetic correlations measured how inherited influences on different traits overlapped. The link between child number and lifespan was weakly negative in women in both samples. It was near zero in men who reached 45 and weakly positive in men in the broader sample. Later first births were genetically linked to longer lifespan, especially in the broader sample. The authors concluded that the findings offered little support for a strong genetic trade-off between fertility and longevity.
Why it matters
Theories of aging often invoke inherited advantages for reproduction that come at a cost to survival. This study bears on how well that proposed trade-off fits human life histories.
Caveats
The main analyses selected people who survived to at least 45, and reproductive analyses included only married people with at least one child. These historical Dutch family-record estimates do not establish causal effects, and the preprint has not been peer-reviewed.
The paper
Genetic architecture of reproduction and longevity in historical Dutch cohorts
University of Tartu
bioRxiv, Jun 3, 2026, Open access, CC BY-ND, Preprint, not peer-reviewed
