ASSORTATIVE MATING - BIO-DEMOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURE OF HUMAN-POPULATIONS

Concerning marriage, norms are existing in the collective conscience. These norms, to which everyone will try to agree, may vary in function of the societies, but in any way the choice of a partner will be always limited. The number of the potential partners is very limited. The assortative mating of the anthropological characters, studied in samples with limited geographical and socio-economic variability, is not always positive: the variability of the criteria at the level of the choice of a partner and the variability of the social norms relative to the marriage, can explain the variability observed in the coefficients of correlation. This variability relative to the assortative mating of physical characters is chiefly evident in the studies of non-European and non-industrial populations. In the European societies, even when the sample has a reduced variability, the assortative mating is on the contrary highly positive. © 1979.