Assortative mating on blood type: Evidence from one million Chinese pregnancies
Edited by Dalton Conley, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; received June 9, 2022; accepted October 27, 2022
Significance
In the human population, spousal pairs have been found to share phenotypes, which demonstrates the highly nonrandom nature of human mate choice. However, assortative mating on blood type—one of the most fundamental phenotypes in biological, medical, and psychological studies—has not been investigated. Using a unique dataset from China, we provide statistical analysis to test whether matching on blood type is nonrandom and find a set of strong evidence for assortative mating on blood type. The findings are robust after we control for the effect of other possible mechanisms, and show that the spousal concordance on blood type we observe is attributable to not only an individual’s mate opportunity but also their mate choice.
Abstract
Blood type is one of the most fundamental phenotypes in biological, medical, and psychological studies. Using a unique dataset of one million Chinese pregnancies, we find strong evidence from a group of statistical tests for assortative mating on blood type. After controlling for anthropometric and socioeconomic confounders, assortative mating remains robust.
Data, Materials, and Software Availability
We used 2014 to 2015 Chinese prepregnancy checkup data available from the Institute of Science and Technology of the NHC of the People’s Republic of China. Data and code have been deposited in https://cloud.tsinghua.edu.cn/d/e86e227d8e66475ba790/ (48).
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021ZD0111201). K.T. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72192802) and Guoqiang Institute, Tsinghua University (2020GQG1018). J.W. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72222022, 82161148011, 72171013). D.X. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71973075, 71973076) and Vanke Special Fund for Public Health and Health Discipline Development, Tsinghua University. H.Z. acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation (No. 1928278) and Michigan State University Asian Studies Center Dr. Delia Koo Endowment Fund.
Author contributions
K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. designed research; Y.H., K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. performed research; Y.H., K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.H. analyzed data; and Y.H., D.X., and H.Z. wrote the paper.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.
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Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
Data, Materials, and Software Availability
We used 2014 to 2015 Chinese prepregnancy checkup data available from the Institute of Science and Technology of the NHC of the People’s Republic of China. Data and code have been deposited in https://cloud.tsinghua.edu.cn/d/e86e227d8e66475ba790/ (48).
Submission history
Received: June 9, 2022
Accepted: October 27, 2022
Published online: December 14, 2022
Published in issue: December 20, 2022
Keywords
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021ZD0111201). K.T. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72192802) and Guoqiang Institute, Tsinghua University (2020GQG1018). J.W. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72222022, 82161148011, 72171013). D.X. acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71973075, 71973076) and Vanke Special Fund for Public Health and Health Discipline Development, Tsinghua University. H.Z. acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation (No. 1928278) and Michigan State University Asian Studies Center Dr. Delia Koo Endowment Fund.
Author contributions
K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. designed research; Y.H., K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. performed research; Y.H., K.T., J.W., D.X., and H.Z. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.H. analyzed data; and Y.H., D.X., and H.Z. wrote the paper.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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