Laura Betzig (born December 15, 1953) is an American anthropologist known for her studies of equality and inequality across space and time.
She was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, went to Pioneer High School, got a BA in psychology from the University of Michigan and a PhD in anthropology from Northwestern University, where she worked with Napoleon Chagnon.
[1] [2] [3] Betzig did fieldwork in the Western Caroline Islands, on Ifaluk and Yap, where she found that chiefs get food and labor from commoners, and are able to raise more children as a result.
She did cross-cultural work on over a hundred politically-autonomous societies in the Human Relations Area Files where she found, again, that powerful men have access to more women and father more children, and that those differences increase when the powerless lack a way out.
For the last few decades Betzig has read world history, and documented the decline of political power and sexual access over the last few centuries in the West as emigration increased, first with the Crusades, then with Atlantic crossings.