Are people who come from third world countries more likely to be inbred?

Question

Are people who come from third world countries more likely to be inbred?

Answer 1

My answer would tend toward the "no" side for several reasons.

First, why are you asking the question? Ask yourself what you mean by "inbred." If you mean several generations of close relatives, what we would call first cousins, or closer intermarrying then there is a cultural explanation. The definition of close family members is not objective and universal but culturally determined. In some cultures all of the children of you mother's brother (what we in the Anglo West call firs cousins) are called brother or sister and are off limits to marriage. However your father's brother's children are not considered in the same clan and are often open to marriage. These are more common practices with what we in Anthropology call simpler societies, non-industrial, or tribal and agricultural peoples, but not exclusively so.It is a near universal that all cultures follow what is called an incest taboo. The only difficulty is that some cultures define close kin differently than others. So for these people our concept of inbreeding is not applicable since how they define family is different.

Another thing to keep in mind is what is the pool of available mates? This can be limited by how large the local population is, social customs and taboos, social rank or hierarchy that further proscribes who one can marry, as well as kinds of resources available and a groups mode of production. All of this can limit the pool of available mates.

A third factor is that there is a great deal of misinformation in the public imagination about the results of what is called cousin marriage. The perception is that any cousin marriage or even brother sister marriage can lead to horrible deformations. The reality is that perfectly viable off spring can be created. The problem is that the probability of passing on harmful recessive traits like hemophilia is greatly increased. The classic example here is the British, German, and Russian royal families that shared many common relations also had a very high incidence of hemophilia with the most famous case in the Russian Romanov family of Czarevich Alexi who was "treated" by the famous Rasputin.

Some other prominent examples of endogamy-the practice of marrying within one's own social group are: Isolated and orthodox Jewish communities in Europe, isolated farming communities in the U.S. and many other countries, many royal families- supposedly to keep the bloodlines pure and to keep alliances.

I hope this helps

Answer 2

No

Answer 3

no.....

Answer 4

liebknic , thanks. That was informative.

For the Q. I think , correct me If I was wrong, U R trying to say that those immigrants coming to the USA are going to form sub-cultures similar to those formed in Germany & France. I don't think that American media will encourage such cultural bonds to take place. At least not w/ the second generation. and at the end they loose their Identity for a label s.a. Afro-American and Latino American . Does Scottish American sound familiar?

Answer 5

In many countries in the middle east and in south asia families encourage marriage between first cousins.  Which means that they probably have less genetic diversity than societies where marriage partners are less related to each other.

But not every third world country is the same.  It all depends on which country you are talking about.