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The Economist had a special report on marriage a few months back with a bit on cousin marriage around the world. They had an interesting conclusion. > Two acad

The Economist had a special report on marriage a few months back with a bit on cousin marriage around the world. They had an interesting conclusion. > Two academics, Bilal Barakat and Stuart Gietel-Basten, point out that when women usually have five surviving children, a woman can expect to have 25 male cousins. When the average number of children falls to two, that same woman will have just three male cousins, some or all of whom might be younger than she is, and thus ineligible as marriage partners. The marriage squeeze will be even tighter in cultures that insist, for example, that a woman marry not any old cousin but her father’s brother’s son. Eventually, cousin marriage will be crushed not by medics but by mathematics https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21731490-practice-cousin-marriage-doomed-consanguineous-marriages-are-declining https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21731490-pract...

dalbasal 9y ago
Interesting! I'd never thought of cousin availability as a factor. But....is it actually possible to average much over 2 children for very long? I mean, that's a population boom.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  Definitely yes. Pretty much the case throughout most human history. Somewhat countered by the high rate of infant/children death though.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    Weird things happen because the the number of surviving children isn't uniform. Where that hit home for me was during the great depression the median family was small. Most families were using various types of birth control and illicit abortions were rampant. However most children came from larger families... because large families were really large. And poor. Hint my dad had two brothers. One of my dad's brothers fathered six kids. My dad three and his other brother one. So families sizes of 6:3:1 The majority of my grandmothers grandchildren came from a family with 6 children. Those six have 14 children. My dad and other uncle have two grandchildren total, one each.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      My paternal grandfather had 12 surviving children, by two wives. The first, my grandmother, died in childbirth. The second was the nanny. Me, I've had no children that I know of.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    But not much more than 2 children surviving through marriage age. That would mean a total population explosion in less than a century. Definitely wasn't ever the norm: population used to be more or less constant through mid-XVIII century.
    - skj 9y ago
      Side comment, but using Roman numerals to indicate century is completely bizarre to me.
      - DanAndersen 9y ago
        It seems to be a thing in various continental European regions. I'm most familiar with seeing it done in French. From Wikipedia: >Capital or small capital Roman numerals are widely used in Romance languages to denote centuries, e.g. the French xviiie siècle[26] and the Spanish siglo XVIII mean "18th century". Slavic languages in and adjacent to Russia similarly favour Roman numerals (XVIII век). On the other hand, in Slavic languages in Central Europe, like most Germanic languages, one writes "18." (with a period) before the local word for "century".
        jhbadger 9y ago
        And the famous Mexican beer Dos Equis gets its name because it was created in 1897 and was celebrating the soon to be 20th century (XX, Dos Equis in Spanish).

dalbasal 9y ago

Interesting! I'd never thought of cousin availability as a factor. But....is it actually possible to average much over 2 children for very long? I mean, that's a population boom.

jhbadger 9y ago
Definitely yes. Pretty much the case throughout most human history. Somewhat countered by the high rate of infant/children death though.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  Weird things happen because the the number of surviving children isn't uniform. Where that hit home for me was during the great depression the median family was small. Most families were using various types of birth control and illicit abortions were rampant. However most children came from larger families... because large families were really large. And poor. Hint my dad had two brothers. One of my dad's brothers fathered six kids. My dad three and his other brother one. So families sizes of 6:3:1 The majority of my grandmothers grandchildren came from a family with 6 children. Those six have 14 children. My dad and other uncle have two grandchildren total, one each.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    My paternal grandfather had 12 surviving children, by two wives. The first, my grandmother, died in childbirth. The second was the nanny. Me, I've had no children that I know of.
- anovikov 9y ago
  But not much more than 2 children surviving through marriage age. That would mean a total population explosion in less than a century. Definitely wasn't ever the norm: population used to be more or less constant through mid-XVIII century.
  - skj 9y ago
    Side comment, but using Roman numerals to indicate century is completely bizarre to me.
    - DanAndersen 9y ago
      It seems to be a thing in various continental European regions. I'm most familiar with seeing it done in French. From Wikipedia: >Capital or small capital Roman numerals are widely used in Romance languages to denote centuries, e.g. the French xviiie siècle[26] and the Spanish siglo XVIII mean "18th century". Slavic languages in and adjacent to Russia similarly favour Roman numerals (XVIII век). On the other hand, in Slavic languages in Central Europe, like most Germanic languages, one writes "18." (with a period) before the local word for "century".
      - jhbadger 9y ago
        And the famous Mexican beer Dos Equis gets its name because it was created in 1897 and was celebrating the soon to be 20th century (XX, Dos Equis in Spanish).