Do arranged marriages tend to lead to endogamous relationships and reduce genetic diversity?

Question

It has come to my notice that in societies that in encourage arranged marriages, there exists a large number of marital relations between the same two (or a small group of) families which is not strictly inbreeding, but rather a very milder form.

Could this explain the increased occurrences of genetic disorders (e.g. diabetes) in such societies?

Answer 1

Yes, of course it does. Breeding within a limited population always increases the incidence of recessive gene expression. Interestingly, a lot of these societies practice consanguineous marriage, which further amplifies the risk.

Answer 2

Arrange marriage does not necessary mean marrying someone from the same society or group as you are. It means marrying some one that is recommended by your family or met through your family. But it is true that in most society that have arrange marriages where the couple are from the same group, the genetic disorders increase because in such arrange marriages, if one partner has a variant gene the risk that the other has it too is far higher, more like one in eight, thus passing the illness to their children also increases! Hope this helps!

Answer 3

It certainly does. The caste system has been prevalent in India for at least 2000 years. This system probably evolved when man first began living in groups and villages, where people took up roles in the group based on their physical capabilities. 2000 years ago, physical strength obviously was the key to survival. However as compared to other societies, the Indian society [read the dominant group at that time which would be typically well built, fair and intelligent] decided to stratify itself on castes which would be passed from generation to generation. The caste would determine your social order in society and not your enterprise or hardwork. That one decision by the dominant group to introduce a birth based social order system changed our society irrevocably. Imagine a society where due to thousands of years of breeding the well built and good looking and intelligent breed with similars and the weak and bad looking and less intelligent breed with similars. The result is our country. 90% of the people are visibly identifable as to which caste they belong to. So if you find a fair, healthy and prosperous person in the North, safely assume that he / she must be from a higher caste. But years of such breeding have obviously led to a form of inbreeding. This is clearly visible in the shrinking height of most upper caste children and the prevalence of genetic disorders such as diabetes.

Answer 4

College paper question?

Answer 5

Yes it is possible.