Estimating the Prevalence of Nonpaternity in Germany

Abstract

The prevalence of nonpaternity in human societies is difficult to establish. To obtain a current and fairly unbiased estimate of the nonpaternity rate in Germany, we analysed a dataset consisting of 971 children and their parents in whom human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing had been carried out in the context of bone marrow transplantation. In this sample, nine exclusions (0.93%) could be identified on the basis of more than 300 HLA-haplotypes defined by four HLA genes. Given this number of exclusions, a maximum likelihood estimate of the nonpaternity rate in the population of 0.94% was obtained with asymptotic 95% confidence limits of 0.33% and 1.55%, respectively. This result is in accordance with recent surveys as well as findings from Switzerland for a comparable sample, and it suggests that earlier estimates of the nonpaternity rate which were often in excess of 10% may have been largely exaggerated.

Low historical rates of cuckoldry in a Western European human population traced by Y-chromosome and genealogical data

“…Both of our methods therefore estimated a substantially lower historical EPP rate for Flanders than the 8-30% per generation suggested by previous studies based on behavioural data on rates of EPCs in Western Europe and given the absence of reliable contraceptive methods [30 -33]. Our estimates, in contrast, are close to those obtained from genetic studies of contemporary Western European populations, particularly to the ones that focused on subjects where the father was confident of his paternity, and which typically report EPP rates of around 1-2% [21,26,27]. This suggests that EPP rates have not changed substantially during recent centuries in Western European populations, and have not greatly decreased after the large-scale introduction of contraceptives in the 1960s.…”

“…These studies have shown that median EPP rates are only between 1 and 3% in most Western European populations [11,21,23], although rates can be higher in low socioeconomic settings [24] and in some traditional small-scale societies, such as among Yanomami Indians [25] and the Himba [9]. Recent relatively unbiased studies carried out on bone marrow transplantation samples obtained maximum-likelihood estimates of EPP rates of only 0.94% in a German population [26] and of 0.65% in a Swiss population [27]-figures that are probably representative for most Western European populations. The relatively low rates of EPP documented in these studies contradict the frequently cited figure that the average rate would be 10-30% in Western populations [21].…”

Three hundred years of low non-paternity in a human population

“…Finally, the nonpaternity rate of R1b families was higher, rather than lower, than nonR1b families, suggesting that we did not miss non-paternities in the more frequent R1b families. As more studies are reporting very low non-paternity rates (Anderson, 2006;Voracek et al, 2008;Strassmann et al, 2012;Wolf et al, 2012;Larmuseau et al 2013;Boattini et al, 2015) in disparate human populations we may need to conclude that the historical cuckoldry rate of, at least Western, human populations may well be very low-o3% and frequently o1%. In support of such low rates of non-paternity several studies comparing surnames to Y-chromosome haplotypes of substantially older populations also gave very low rates of non-paternity: 1.3% for Sykes in England (Sykes and Irven, 2000); 1.6% for O'Sullivan in Ireland (McEvoy and Bradley, 2006); 1.49% in Iceland (Helgason et al, 2003); 0.74% for the five most common surnames in Oriente Columbia (Bedoya et al, 2006); 1.28-3.26% for five British surnames (King and Jobling, 2009a); 0.91% in the Belgian population (Larmuseau et al, 2013); 1.21% in the Partecipanza of Italy (Boattini et al, 2015).…”

“…Five subsequent studies on dissimilar populations also gave very low estimates of 0.94% in Germany (Wolf et al, 2012), 0.73% for Afrikaners (Greeff et al, 2012), 1.3-2.9% for different Dogon religions (Strassmann et al, 2012), 0.9% in Belgium (Larmuseau et al, 2013) and 1.2% in Italy (Boattini et al 2015). Although this important parameter for human populations may not be pinned down to a single value, it is necessary to quantify the rate of cuckoldry in a variety of human populations and sample sizes need to be large, as small samples can overestimate the non-paternity rate (Voracek et al, 2008).…”

Future Efforts in Flynn Effect Research: Balancing Reductionism with Holism

“…Half-siblings should be removed for the same reason, although their inclusion will only create bias if the non-shared parents differ in some salient way. In addition to known half-siblings, there is also the case of half-siblings resulting from incorrect assignment of parentage (e.g., [47]). The inclusion of opposite-sex sibling pairs will likely not constitute bias, as long as the male/female ratio is equal in groups A and B.…”