Rebecca Sear

7.7k total citations · 1 hit paper
116 papers, 4.3k citations indexed

About

Rebecca Sear is a scholar working on Gender Studies, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology and Demography. According to data from OpenAlex, Rebecca Sear has authored 116 papers receiving a total of 4.3k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 65 papers in Gender Studies, 45 papers in Experimental and Cognitive Psychology and 44 papers in Demography. Recurrent topics in Rebecca Sear's work include Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (61 papers), Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (45 papers) and Family Dynamics and Relationships (40 papers). Rebecca Sear is often cited by papers focused on Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (61 papers), Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (45 papers) and Family Dynamics and Relationships (40 papers). Rebecca Sear collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand. Rebecca Sear's co-authors include Ruth Mace, Ian A. McGregor, David A. Coall, Paula Sheppard, Kristin Snopkowski, David W. Lawson, Susan B. Schaffnit, Fiona Steele, Jonathan C. K. Wells and Mhairi A. Gibson and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Lancet.

In The Last Decade

Rebecca Sear

109 papers receiving 4.0k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories sort by overperformance

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival

2007 674 citations Rebecca Sear, Ruth Mace Evolution and Human Behavior profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
Rebecca Sear United Kingdom	34	1.8k	1.6k	1.3k	1.1k	748	116	4.3k
Karen L. Kramer United States	30	1.2k 0.7×	552 0.3×	943 0.7×	302 0.3×	303 0.4×	89	3.0k
Virpi Lummaa Finland	39	1.6k 0.9×	1.1k 0.7×	634 0.5×	738 0.7×	886 1.2×	159	4.8k
David W. Lawson United States	25	627 0.3×	638 0.4×	491 0.4×	431 0.4×	334 0.4×	64	1.9k
Patricia Draper United States	20	2.2k 1.2×	670 0.4×	1.2k 0.9×	545 0.5×	288 0.4×	42	4.5k
Jane B. Lancaster United States	22	1.4k 0.8×	576 0.4×	931 0.7×	437 0.4×	183 0.2×	36	3.0k
Bruce J. Ellis United States	42	4.3k 2.3×	911 0.6×	1.8k 1.3×	833 0.8×	1.2k 1.6×	84	12.2k
Mark V. Flinn United States	29	1.4k 0.8×	502 0.3×	1.1k 0.8×	309 0.3×	209 0.3×	62	3.5k
J. Richard Udry United States	57	1.7k 0.9×	1.7k 1.1×	2.2k 1.7×	1.2k 1.1×	706 0.9×	182	9.7k
Judith Semon Dubas Netherlands	36	706 0.4×	298 0.2×	1.2k 0.9×	345 0.3×	216 0.3×	96	4.9k
Barry S. Hewlett United States	38	1.2k 0.6×	273 0.2×	1.5k 1.1×	328 0.3×	105 0.1×	79	4.7k

Countries citing papers authored by Rebecca Sear

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Rebecca Sear's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Rebecca Sear with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Rebecca Sear more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Rebecca Sear

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Rebecca Sear. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Rebecca Sear. The network helps show where Rebecca Sear may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Rebecca Sear

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Rebecca Sear. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Rebecca Sear based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Rebecca Sear. Rebecca Sear is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

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20 of 20 papers shown

Shenk, Mary K., et al.. (2025). Maternal religiosity and social support to mothers: helpers’ religious identity matters. Religion Brain & Behavior. 16(1). 24–45.

Sear, Rebecca, et al.. (2025). Household structure in Ghana: Exploring dynamics over three decades. Demographic Research. 52. 971–1022. 1 indexed citations

Sear, Rebecca, et al.. (2025). High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 122(40). e2508091122–e2508091122.

McLean, Estelle, Maria Sironi, Albert Dube, et al.. (2024). Transitions to adulthood in men and women in rural Malawi in the 21st century using sequence analysis: Some evidence of delay. Demographic Research. 51. 459–500.

Schaffnit, Susan B., Abigail E. Page, Robert Lynch, et al.. (2024). Religious women receive more allomaternal support from non-partner kin in two low-fertility countries. Evolution and Human Behavior. 45(3). 268–280. 2 indexed citations

Schaffnit, Susan B., Robert Lynch, Rebecca Sear, et al.. (2024). Cost structures and socioecological conditions impact the fitness outcomes of human alloparental care in agent-based model simulations. Evolution and Human Behavior. 45(5). 106613–106613.

Thurstans, Susan, Charles Opondo, Jeanette Bailey, et al.. (2023). How age and sex affect treatment outcomes for children with severe malnutrition: A multi‐country secondary data analysis. Maternal and Child Nutrition. 20(3). e13596–e13596. 1 indexed citations

Sear, Rebecca, et al.. (2022). Disentangling the relationships between religion and fertility. Religion Brain & Behavior. 12(4). 343–346. 1 indexed citations

Sear, Rebecca, Andrew M. Prentice, & Jonathan C. K. Wells. (2022). Nutritional status and adult mortality in a mid-20^th century Gambian population: do different types of physical ‘capital’ have different associations with mortality?. The History of the Family. 28(2). 360–381. 1 indexed citations

10.

Cunningham, Kenda, et al.. (2022). Beyond the mother-child dyad: Is co-residence with a grandmother associated with adolescent girls’ family planning knowledge?. PLoS ONE. 17(3). e0265276–e0265276.

11.

Shenk, Mary K., Siobhán M. Mattison, Rebecca Sear, et al.. (2021). Social support, nutrition and health among women in rural Bangladesh: complex tradeoffs in allocare, kin proximity and support network size. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 376(1827). 20200027–20200027. 12 indexed citations

12.

Sear, Rebecca. (2021). Demography and the rise, apparent fall, and resurgence of eugenics. Population Studies. 75(sup1). 201–220. 19 indexed citations

13.

Sear, Rebecca, et al.. (2020). Children of the (gender) revolution: A theoretical and empirical synthesis of how gendered division of labour influences fertility. Population Studies. 75(2). 169–190. 44 indexed citations

14.

Thurstans, Susan, Charles Opondo, Andrew Seal, et al.. (2020). Boys are more likely to be undernourished than girls: a systematic review and meta-analysis of sex differences in undernutrition. BMJ Global Health. 5(12). e004030–e004030. 149 indexed citations

15.

Shaver, John H., Eleanor A. Power, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, et al.. (2020). Church attendance and alloparenting: an analysis of fertility, social support and child development among English mothers. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 375(1805). 20190428–20190428. 31 indexed citations

16.

Sear, Rebecca, Paula Sheppard, & David A. Coall. (2019). Cross-cultural evidence does not support universal acceleration of puberty in father-absent households. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 374(1770). 20180124–20180124. 64 indexed citations

17.

Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, Mary C. Towner, Ryan Baldini, et al.. (2019). Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 374(1780). 20180076–20180076. 10 indexed citations

18.

Sear, Rebecca, et al.. (2019). Earning their keep? Fostering, children's education, and work in north-western Tanzania. Demographic Research. 41. 263–292. 20 indexed citations

19.

Brown, Gillian R., Thomas E. Dickins, Rebecca Sear, & Kevin N. Laland. (2011). Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity introduction. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 366(156). 503–9. 1 indexed citations

20.

Sear, Rebecca & Ruth Mace. (2007). Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival. Evolution and Human Behavior. 29(1). 1–18. 674 indexed citations breakdown →

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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