Field test of self-paced work capacity: Ifugao rice farmers.

This article reports results of a field test of work capacity on 30 male farmers ranging in age from 15-54. It involved a self-paced walk from the valley floor, up the mountain wall, and return, with heart rate monitoring. The route was 2.21 km long with a vertical rise of about 200 m. At its steepest, the grade was about 34 degrees, requiring long runs of steps cut into the mountain face. The purpose of this research was to determine whether biological and behavioral traits of individual men help to explain household economic productivity to which they contribute. The traits included anthropometry and a new measure of self-paced, voluntary work capacity (heart rate x time). Income per productive adult increased as did the relative fitness index (heart rate increase above resting x min taken to finish the course). However, the number of rice bundles earned per family, expected to increase with more fit workers, increased with the number of household adults and sitting height (adjusted R(2) = 0.392), but not with self-paced fitness markers. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 12:192-200, 2000. Copyright 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Fertility, migration, and mortality in an old order Amish community.

Mortality, fertility, and migration data were used to identify population structure in a group of Old Order Amish living in New York State. Two thousand and sixteen individuals were accounted for since the community was first formed in 1948 and this is nearly total ascertainment of the population. Further, ethnography compared Amish households to neighboring non-Amish households to understand differences in health beliefs, caregiving patterns, and economic strategies. Despite evidence that suggests that the Amish have health risks comparable to U.S. population and that they under-utilize health care, this study demonstrates that Amish age standardized death rates are 19% below the U.S. death rate in 1960. Natural fertility combined with low infant mortality, migrating to form new communities when population density increased, and selective but appropriate use of western biomedicine have emerged as strong cultural patterns that facilitated reproductive success and longevity among the Amish. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 10:619-628, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

China productivity project: General description and analysis of productivity.

The amount of work that people do is a focal point of human life, an outcome with extraordinarily complex roots. The physical task itself, the natural setting, biological work capacity, and behavioral patterns presumably condition productivity. This paper presents a model by which work output of Chinese cycle haulers was investigated, and outlines investigative techniques including work physiology, health assessment, cold response, and ethnography of the workplace and home. The objective is to explain variation in work done on a daily, monthly, and seasonal basis. This paper also quantifies work output, or productivity, using long-term pay records as measures of productivity. While pay records, which show statistically normal distributions, serve as the primary dependent variable in the analysis, field observations and experiments offer supplementary data on the behaviors that produce work output. In a sample of 48 men, various measures of biological capacity and behaviors, such as motivation, predict overall productivity regardless of season. Since mean daily pay and monthly pay have different predictors, there is much individual choice in how many days per month one works. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Worker motivation and productivity in chinese (beijing) tricycle haulers: Integrating social and biological variables.

Ethnographic assessment of worker lifestyle and motivation was paired with measurement of health, maximum oxygen uptake, anthropometry, and cold response to predict productivity in order to determine how well behavioral ratings and biological rankings of worker capacity predict actual productivity. The subjects were Chinese laborers hauling heavy loads on a cycle by human power during a Beijing winter. Worker productivity was measured as pay for unit of work done. This paper reports the ethnographic methods and results. Worker health was assessed through a physical examination including vital signs, echocardiogram (ECG), nutrition, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. Worker motivation was assessed during 10 weeks of participant observation, extensive interview, and a visit to the worker's household. Motivation was rated using a rank-order comparison of all 50 workers from lowest to highest. Other observational ratings (household assets, demands on worker, and health of household members) were completed at the time of the home visit using five-point scales. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.