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Paternity rates by population

By razib on March 30, 2009.

A few years ago a paper came out, How Well Does Paternity Confidence Match Actual Paternity?:

Evolutionary theory predicts that males will provide less parental investment for putative offspring who are unlikely to be their actual offspring. Crossâculturally, paternity confidence (a man's assessment of the likelihood that he is the father of a putative child) is positively associated with men's involvement with children and with investment or inheritance from paternal kin. A survey of 67 studies reporting nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity confidence rates of nonpaternity are(excluding studies of unknown methodology) typically 1.9%, substantially less than the typical rates of 10% or higher cited by many researchers. Further crossâcultural investigation of the relationship between paternity and paternity confidence is warranted.

I've referred to this paper before, but I thought it might be useful to post the rates for various populations. See the original paper for sources & discussion.

Note that the second set of results from paternity testing laboratories obviously are subject to selection bias.

Table 1. Nonpaternity Rates (%) When Paternity Confidence Is Relatively High
Population Actual     Sample Size  
Sephardic Kohanim (Jewish priests) 0.4     24  
United States 0.8     496  
Switzerland 0.83     1607  
Ashkenazic Kohanim (Jewish priests) 1.2     44  
Canada (Quebec) 1.2     42  
United Kingdom 1.3     48  
United Kingdom 1.35     521  
United States (Michigan), white 1.49     1417  
Iceland 1.49     Not stated  
United Kingdom 1.59     756  
Sweden 2.1     63  
United States (California), white 2.3     6960  
United States (Hawaii) 2.8     2839  
United States 2.8     200  
France 2.9     362  
Mexico 2.9     217  
United Kingdom (West London) 3.7     2596  
Canada 4     25  
France 6.9-9.4     266-361  
Brazil/Venezuela (Yanomamo) 9.1     132  
United States (Michigan), black 10.1     523  
Mexico (Nuevo Leo´n) 11.8     396  
           
Table 2. Nonpaternity Rates (%) from Paternity Testing Laboratories
Russia 14.3     21  
Finland 15.2     35  
United Kingdom 16.6     1702  
Germany 16.8     256  
Brazil (Belo Horizonte) 22     200  
South Africa, white 22.4     264  
United States (Cleveland) 23.9     67  
United States (Los Angeles), white 24.9     1393  
United States 25     1000  
United States 25.2     2500  
United States 26     50  
Portugal 27.7     83  
United States (New York City) 28.7     300  
United States (Baltimore) 29     124  
United States (New York City) 29.4     102  
Portugal 29.8     790  
South Africa, Cape Malay 30.5     59  
United States (New York City), black 30.6     98  
United States (Cleveland) 32     200  
United States (New York City), white 34.4     425  
Finland 34.6     26  
United States (Illinois) 37     753  
France (Paris) 38.1     543  
Sweden 38.7     5018  
South Africa, Cape Coloured 40.1     1156  
South Africa, black 31.1     645  
United States 42     100  
Italy 42     31  
United States (Illinois) 45     37  
Sweden 55     142  
United States 55.6     108  
           
Tags
Culture
genetics
Paternity Rate

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