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 | |||
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