Genetic and socioeconomic study of mate choice in Latinos reveals novel assortment patterns

Nonrandom mating in human populations reflects a confluence of socioeconomic and biological factors. In this paper, we integrate population genomics with quantitative social sciences to address fundamental questions about mate selection. In Mexican and Puerto Rican couples, we find that partners share more similar genomic ancestries, which is characterized as the fractions of genome that come from European, Native American, and African ancestries, than random pairs of individuals from the same community. Our analysis shows that this similarity cannot be explained by the individuals' socioeconomic factors alone. Our mathematical model illustrates how assortative mating can increase the prevalence of recessive diseases in Latino populations.