Joe Hackman

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Anthropology at Baylor University, where I work with Dr. John Shaver on the Evolutionary Demography of Religion project. This international, multi-site collaboration investigates how religion influences fertility decisions, maternal and child health, and long-term offspring success. Drawing on data from over 10,000 parents and children across Bangladesh, India, Malawi, The Gambia, and the United States, the project explores how religious beliefs, social networks, and economic conditions shape reproductive and parental investment strategies in diverse contexts.

I received my Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2019, where I also completed my M.A. I hold a dual B.A. in Anthropology and Philosophy from Boise State University. My training integrates evolutionary anthropology, demography, and ethnographic fieldwork, providing a strong interdisciplinary foundation for both research and teaching.

Before joining Baylor, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Utah, where I developed theoretical and methodological innovations for measuring market integration, building culturally sensitive models that capture agricultural and market-based wealth to better understand disparities in health, reproduction, and material well-being.

Research in Progress

My research broadly examines the social and material determinants of health, with a particular focus on growth, development, reproduction, and inequality. I combine large-scale cross-cultural datasets—such as the Demographic and Health Surveys—with longitudinal case studies among the Yucatec Maya and Pumé foragers to understand how families adapt to shifting economic and ecological conditions. Recent work has explored how adipose development diverges across populations, how fertility trade-offs emerge in mixed economies, and how global health metrics may underestimate undernutrition by overlooking population-specific growth patterns.

I also collaborate on several interdisciplinary research initiatives, including the ENDOW Project, which investigates social capital and inequality in small-scale societies, and the Growing Across Cultures project at the Max Planck Institute, which develops population-specific growth references for global use.

Research Interests

• Economic transitions and the emergence of inequality in health, education, and reproduction
• Developmental plasticity and cross-cultural variation in growth and adiposity
• Social networks, religion, and the demographic transition in small-scale and low-income settings

Selected Publications

• Hackman, J., Campbell, B., Hewlett, B., Page, A., & Kramer, K. (2024). Adipose development is consistent across hunter–gatherers and diverges from western references. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 291(2029), 20240110.
• Hackman, J., & Hruschka, D. (2021). An Agricultural Wealth Index for Multidimensional Wealth Assessments. Population and Development Review, 4(1), 237–254.
• Hackman, J., & Kramer, K. (2021). Balancing Fertility and Livelihood Diversity in Mixed Economies. PLOS ONE, 16(6), e0253535.
• Hackman, J., & Hruschka, D. (2020). Disentangling basal and accrued height-for-age for cross-population comparisons. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 171(3), 481–495.
• Kramer, K., & Hackman, J. (2024). Uncertainty in a globalizing world: Livelihood and fertility variance increases in response to rapid change. American Journal of Human Biology, 36(3), e24028.