This book discusses the characteristics of adolescence cross-culturally and examines the differences in the adolescent experience for males and females. Several relationships are tested in order to gain an understanding of cross-cultural patterns in adolescence.

This article focuses on ecological correlates of sexual division in the control of resources. The author tests several ecological theories put forth by others. Sex coalitions are examined in humans, and sexual dimorphism in resource acquisition and control is discussed.

Considerable disagreement exists in regard to the origin and distribution of economic phenomena such as money, slavery, markets, exchange, and imbalanced transfers. Here the author utilizes a worldwide cross-cultural sample of 60 pre-industrial "societies" to empirically test many economic hypotheses, with a focus on distributional mechanisms and institutions.

This book is concerned with explaining variation in the status of women. The author, after measuring over 50 aspects of status, first concludes that status is not a unitary concept. Therefore the author looks at 10 different domains of status. Many traditional explanations are not supported; most support is found for the influence of social complexity which generally lowers female status.

Textor summarizes cross-cultural findings on adolescence gender separation pertaining to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

The author investigates the associations between production relations, the character of productive forces, and sexual life. A significant correlation was found between production relations and the character of productive forces. Results also showed that more sexual freedom is associated with higher level of development of productive forces and an absence of internal oppression.

Dietary variation has been implicated in population-level heath outcomes such as adult height and infant health. Here the author investigates these relationships in a sample of 118 nonindustrial societies, providing a comparative and quantitative assessment of nutrition and health cross-culturally.

The Trivers-Willard hypothesis posits that concentrations of human milk immune factors vary with maternal condition (maternal diet diversity and body mass index) and the sex of the infant. Using linear mixed-effects models to analyze 358 milk samples from 10 international sites, the authors find minimal support for the Trivers-Willard hypothesis; only one immune factor, IgG, exhibited a significant relationship.

This article uses factor analysis to identify the key variables underlying the many cross-cultural associations reported by Textor (1967). Twelve factors are identified.

Explores 109 traits relating primarily to physical habitat, economy, political and social organization, and religion, to see how they relate to the role and treatment of the aged. General patterns were sought. Numerous ethnographic examples are given.