Browsing by Author "Godoy, Ricardo"

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    Changes in adult well-being and economic inequalities: An exploratory observational longitudinal study (2002-2010) of micro-level trends among Tsimane', a small-scale rural society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon
    (2024) Godoy, Ricardo; Bauchet, Jonathan; Behrman, Jere R.; Huanca, Tomas; Leonard, William R.; Reyes-Garcia, Victoria; Rosinger, Asher; Tanner, Susan; Undurraga, Eduardo A.; Zycherman, Ariela
    Knowing what happens over time to the lifeways of people in contemporary small-scale non-industrial societies of the rural Global South matters because it helps assess changes in the quality of life of underrepresented groups. It has been hard to answer the question because longitudinal information is rarely collected in such settings. A longitudinal dataset of nine years (2002-2010) from a horticultural-foraging society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon (Tsimane') is used for an exploratory analysis of micro-level trends in indicators of well-being and economic inequalities. We selected 13 Tsimane' villages (from - 100) that varied in proximity to town and surveyed all households in each village. - 240 households were followed yearly to estimate trends of 21 outcomes (e.g., income, sociality, macronutrients). For each economic outcome, annual and all-years-combined Gini coefficients were estimated for the entire sample across the 13 villages. We show a rise in total asset wealth, a change in asset composition (less traditional wealth, more commercial wealth), higher monetary value of foods eaten, and better-perceived health, but a decline in caloric and protein consumption and no marked gender differences in objective or hedonic measures of well-being. Economic inequalities were non-trivial and showed no marked trend but varied between years; asset inequality varied less than income inequality. We document the value of longitudinal, locally grounded indexes of well-being to obtain a granular view of micro-level changes in well-being and the possible use of inequality in the consumption of calories and macronutrients as a valid proxy for income inequality in rural areas of the Global South with tenuous links to the market economy.
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    Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries
    (2021) Jacoby, Nori; Polak, Rainer; Grahn, Jessica Adrienne; Cameron, Daniel J.; Lee, Kyung Myun; Godoy, Ricardo; Undurraga Fourcade, Eduardo Andrés; Huanca, Tomas; Thalwitzer, Timon; Doumbia, Noumouké; Goldberg, Daniel; Margulis, Elizabeth; Wong, Patrick; Jure, Luis; Rocamora, Martín; Fujii, Shinya; Savage, Patrick E.; Ajimi, Jun; Konno, Rei; Oishi, Sho; Jakubowski, Kelly; Holzapfel, André; Mungan, Esra; Kaya, Ece; Rao, Preeti; Ananthanarayana, Rohit Mattur; Alladi, Suvarna; Tarr, Bronwyn; Anglada-Tort, Manuel; Harrison, Peter M. C.; McPherson, Malinda J.; Dolan, Sophie; Durango, Alex; Mcdermott, Josh
    Music is present in every known society, yet varies from place to place. What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? We measured a signature of mental representations of rhythm in 39 participant groups in 15 countries, spanning urban societies and indigenous populations. Listeners reproduced random ‘‘seed’’ rhythms; their reproductions were fed back as the stimulus (as in the game of “telephone”), such that their biases (the prior) could be estimated from the distribution of reproductions. Every tested group showed a sparse prior with peaks at integer ratio rhythms. However, the importance of different integer ratios varied across groups, often reflecting local musical practices. Our results suggest a common feature of music cognition – discrete rhythm “categories” at small integer ratios. These discrete representations likely stabilize musical systems in the face of cultural transmission, but interact with culture-specific traditions to yield diversity evident when mental representations are probed across many cultures.
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    The effect of gender targeting of food transfers on child nutritional status: experimental evidence from the Bolivian amazon
    (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2021) Bauchet, Jonathan; Undurraga, Eduardo; Zycherman, Ariela; Behrman, Jere; Leonard, William; Godoy, Ricardo
    Some research suggests women are more likely to allocate additional resources to their children than are men. This perception has influenced policies such as in-kind food transfer programmes and cash transfer programmes, which often target women recipients. We assess whether targeting in-kind rice transfers to female versus male adult household members has a differential impact on children's short-run nutritional status. We estimate the impacts of transfers of edible rice and rice seeds, randomly allocated to female or male adults, on three anthropometric indicators: BMI-for-age, arm-muscle area, and triceps skinfold thickness. The trial includes 481 children aged 3-11 years in a horticultural-foraging society of native Amazonians in Bolivia. On average, the gender of the transfer recipient does not influence child anthropometric dimensions, possibly due to norms of cooperation and sharing within and between households. We find limited evidence of heterogeneity in impacts. Transfers to women help children who were growth stunted at baseline to partially catch-up to their better-nourished age-sex peers and help boys (but not girls) and children in higher-income households increase their BMI-for-age. The results of this research point to the importance of considering cultural context in determining if allocating food transfers according to gender are most effective.