Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Best Way to Have a Large Family? Marry Your Third Cousin

Icelandic researchers studying the relationship between kinship and human fertility have concluded that the male-female relationship most likely to produce a large number of offspring (that survive infancy) is between third or fourth cousins. Relationships before or after that level of kinship produce smaller surviving batches of children during the couples' lifetime.

The authors' research into the known couples in the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965 suggests "a significant positive association between kinship and fertility."






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