Demographic and Social Aspects of Consanguinity

Objectives: In a single Muslim village in Israel, established about 300 years ago by a small number of founders, a longitudinal study was conducted on the types of marriages and their effects on family planning, with the age at which a woman had her first child and the size of the family assessed. Methods: The information for the analysis was extracted from a detailed database including individuals residing in and originating from the village. Results: A shift from the practice of marrying a close relative, in particular patrilateral parallel first-cousin marriages, to marrying a more remotely related individual was observed during the study period. Another major change was a significant reduction in the mean number of children born per woman from 8.7 among women born between 1930 and 1939 to 4.7 among those born between 1960 and 1969. In families in which the parents were biological relatives, the number of children was always higher than in families in which the parents were unrelated. The mean age of the mother at the birth of her first child progressively increased during the study period from 20.9 to 23.7 years. The maternal age was always higher when the Published online: July 29, 2014 Joël Zlotogora Department of Community Genetics Building 67, Sheba Medical Center IL–52621 Ramat Gan (Israel) E-Mail zlotogora @ gmail.com © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel 0001–5652/14/0774–0010$39.50/0