Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world, is seen as prolific, with 13 children in total, but his fertility is on par with the median woman in Massachusetts in the late 17th century. At that time family sizes of more than 10 children were common in New England.

Historically, men who accumulate status and power, and are not confined by institutional rules or strong social norms, have more female partners than ordinary men. As the Harvard biologist Richard Wrangham has written, “If a male wins power, he will tend to use it to mate with as many females as possible.”

In most post-agricultural societies throughout history, such as among the Aztecs, Babylonians, Chinese, Egyptians, Incans, Indians, and Romans, harems of hundreds of women were the norm for kings, emperors and pharaohs.

The largest number of children that any man has ever had is 888. This individual was a Moroccan emperor named Ismail the Bloodthirsty, who reigned from 1672 to 1727.

Equivalently powerful women throughout history, such as Cleopatra, did not accumulate large harems of hundreds of attractive young men. They could have, but they didn’t.

To be clear, not all powerful males follow this specific pattern. Alexander the Great never showed more than a passing interest in women and fathered just a single child by the time he died at age 32. But Alexander bucked the trend.

A 2016 study of 33 non-industrialized small-scale societies found that in humans, men’s status—as indexed by wealth and political influence—is positively associated with several reproductively relevant outcomes, including number of sexual partners, number of offspring, and number of offspring surviving into adulthood.

In modern societies, men who obtain high levels of income or occupational prestige are more likely to find a romantic partner and have children. A study from 2019 found that a man at the top of the earnings distribution has a more than 90% chance of obtaining a committed romantic partner. In contrast, for men at the bottom, less than 40% find one. In most societies, successful men try to convert their high status into reproductive success.

Of course, human culture is diverse and varied, and constraints on powerful men can inhibit their impulses.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who together possess more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans combined, each have only 3 children.