A note on the generalized effects of assortative mating.

Several twin studies of multiple abilities and educational and socioeconomic variables suggest that a single common factor underlies the contribution of mate selection and cultural inheritance to the covariation of such measures. Theoretical analysis shows that this finding is consistent with a mechanism of mate selection in which specific abilities are merely components of a composite latent variable for which there is assortative mating. We question how far measures of specific abilities reflect behavioral traits of independent adaptive significance.