HSD/AOC-Socio-Biological Tradeoffs of Consanguinity in an Arranged Marriage Market

提案编号：科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的莫巴拉克（Mobarak，Ahmed）尽管有充分的证据表明，近亲结婚对后代的生物学和遗传学风险很大，但在许多发展中国家，近亲结婚仍然很普遍。本研究的目的是从理论上解释和实证文件的社会经济效益的近亲婚姻，有助于维持这些类型的婚姻。 一个集体的家庭内分配和自愿配偶匹配的模型激发了实证研究。该模型预测，对于配偶及其子女来说，近亲婚姻的经济利益应取决于配偶的收入、配偶收入与父母收入的自主性以及性别比例、文化性别规范和结婚/离婚立法等外部分配因素。该项目将利用孟加拉国四个社区的现有数据和尚待收集的数据，（a）记录一个目前没有血缘关系数据的国家的血缘关系流行情况，（B）量化生物风险与任何可能的社会经济效益之间的权衡（就儿童的长期结果而言）血缘关系，（c）研究婚姻市场的决策，包括家庭认为最有吸引力的潜在配偶的特征，以及（d）调查通过婚姻建立国际移徙联系的情况。将产生的数据集将使经济学、社会学、生物学、遗传学和医学科学的研究人员能够研究与家庭内部决策、社交网络的性质以及血缘关系引起的遗传疾病风险有关的各种问题。 拟议的研究是一个独特的跨学科和多学科的方法之间的权衡问题的社会和经济利益的近亲婚姻，而不是公认的生物学上的缺点。孟加拉国是一个人口超过1.4亿的国家，正在经历流行病学从主要传染性疾病向非传染性疾病的转变，是这项研究的理想环境，而且越来越多的孟加拉国人现在居住在西方国家，这为这项工作增添了一个重要的新层面。 研究结果有可能推广到目前正在从传染性疾病为主向非传染性疾病为主过渡的国家和社会。

Proposal Number: 0527751Mobarak, AhmedUniversity of Colorado BoulderConsanguineous marriages remain common practice in much of the developing world despite their well-documented biological and genetic risks for the offspring of such unions. The objective of this study is to theoretically account for and empirically document the socio-economic benefits of consanguineous unions that help to sustain these types of marriages. A collective model of intra-household allocation and assortative spousal matching motivates the empirical investigation. The model predicts that for spouses and their children, the economic benefits of consanguineous marriages should depend on spousal incomes, the autonomy of spousal income from parental income, and external distribution factors like the sex ratio, cultural gender norms, and marriage/divorce legislation. Using existing as well as yet-to-be-gathered data from fourBangladeshi communities, the project will (a) document the prevalence of consanguinity for a country for which such numbers currently do not exist, (b) quantify the trade-off between the biological risks and any possible socio-economic benefits (in terms of long-run outcomes for children) of consanguinity, (c) study decision-making in the marriage market, including the characteristics of potential spouses that families consider to be most attractive, and (d) investigate the creation of international migration links through marriage. The dataset that will be produced will allow researchers in Economics, Sociology, Biology, Genetics and the Medical Sciences to study a variety of questions relating to intra-household decision-making, the nature of social networks, and the risk of genetic disorders stemming from consanguinity. The proposed research is a unique cross- and multidisciplinary approach to the question of trade-offs between the perceived social and economic benefits of consanguineous marriage as opposed to the recognized biological disadvantages. Bangladesh, a country of over 140 million is undergoing an epidemiological transition from a predominantly infectious to a non-communicable disease profile, is an ideal setting for the study, and the growing numbers of Bangladeshis now resident in Western countries add a significant new dimension to the work. Study findings are potentially generalizable to countries and societies currently undergoing transition from predominantly infectious to non-communicable disease profiles.