Post-pandemic Inequalities: Evolutionary Anthropological Frameworks for Long-Term Impacts of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Abstract

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a major mortality event that is well understood in its proximate heterogeneous impacts, but its long-term impacts on inequality are less understood. Within anthropology, evolutionary frameworks such as the epidemiological transitions, biocultural anthropology, and evolutionary medicine can give meaning to ultimate explanations for pandemics' long-term consequences. I seek to identify and shape the gap in the 1918 influenza pandemic literature around the analysis of post-pandemic inequalities compared with pre-pandemic and pandemic period inequalities. I discuss six papers that address consequences on the demography and epidemiology of surviving populations and 11 papers that engage with the fetal origins hypothesis to understand unequal long-term impacts on cohorts exposed to stressful intrauterine environments during the pandemic. I contextualize existing knowledge of unequal impacts within evolutionary anthropological theory and argue that evolutionary anthropology is well suited to lead holistic research on ultimate determinants of long-term pandemic consequences.