
Childhood Autism and Assortative Mating (2012) [pdf] - gwern
http://economics.uchicago.edu/workshops/Golden%20Hays%20Childhood%20Autism.pdf
======
rustynails
I have a few random thoughts as a parent of an autistic child. I recognise
they are anecdotal.

The head doctor of an Autism centre told me there was a strong correlation
between autism and genetics. I mentioned my wife (and her father) were almost
certainly autistic but never diagnosed. This was confirmed as very common: one
side or both usually have a history.

My wife and I met at University, doing the same degree. She was had a very
logical and analytical mind, which is what attracted me to her.

We have an autistic child with a very strong aptitude for language conventions
and solid mathematical reasoning (although the real strength is in language
which is very common in Aspergers - a now defunct classification that I
believe added value in understanding and finding like-minded children who were
compatible socially).

My wife and I do not look alike, nor are we from a common ethnic background,
unless you consider different parts of Western Europe to be sufficiently
common genetics.

Anecdotally: I have spoken with quite a few Aspergers mums and dads. Most dads
are in engineering or mathematics based jobs. Most of the mums I can recall
are logical and have good analytical skills (employment status varies for
mums). When I've met parents of Autistic children that were not Aspergers, I
did not find a consistency of logical thinking. However, this could be my own
selection bias. I've tried not to have bias, but I can't discount it.

Every person is on the spectrum. There are significant variations in the group
defined as Autistic. It would be interesting to know if this group in the
statistics were higher functioning (HFA) and to compare the results from HFA
vs non-HFA.

What I found interesting is that teachers assumed my child had learning
difficulties until we booked a formal assessment (classification: gifted or
near gifted). My father in law was overlooked in a similar way and paid the
penalty (at least, career wise).

~~~
cwbrandsma
Also anecdotal. I have a daughter with Aspergers (just diagnosed, so I'm new
to this).

My wife and I are both Dutch/Friesian, but I am reasonably certain we are not
related. I am a programmer (with dyslexia), my wife is an artist. Both our
fathers are technical with degrees/jobs in electronics. Her father has
numerous patents in aerospace. My wife's mother has manic depression. Most of
my cousins are dyslexic, one is autistic, a few have Aspergers children as
well.

I think I've created the perfect storm to have a child in the autism spectrum.

------
toddmorey
Very interesting read. Need to spend more time with it and think on it some
more.

My son, though he's yet to have a conclusive diagnosis, is very likely on the
autism spectrum, as he's a bright kid but is absolutely "unable to deal with
systems that do not have a lawful structure".

What's interesting is that my wife and I did the complete opposite of
assertive mating. We're from the same hometown, with completely different
backgrounds. We had different friends, have different educational levels,
different ethnicities, different heights, different looks, different
interests, and different perspectives. Genuinely two people from "opposite
sides of the tracks" who meet just from randomly being in the same building.
But the attraction and chemistry were instant and enduring.

(We also, interestingly, both have extremely high adaptability, almost to a
fault. It's been a learning experience to create the type of routine our son
expects.)

I know: it's just one data point. But I've watched the rising rates of autism
with great personal perspective, and it's certainly a complex and multi-
deminsional issue.

The other things to iterate are that autism certainly is a spectrum full of
individual variation (almost to the point of not being a useful label), and
autism isn't necessarily a detriment—it's a perspective and mode of being. If
we could systematically avoid autism through a deeper understanding of the
cause, I'm wondering what the unintended consequences would be. I know one
thing: I would never change my son.

~~~
digi_owl
> austin

Spellchecker strikes again?

> (almost to the point of not being a useful label)

Likely didn't help that now Aspergers is lumped in with the label, though the
reason it was not there for the longest time was that people lacked some of
the classic markers (language development in particular).

As for rising rates, i have a pin on the world turning more "social". Where
before you could always retreat to a back room job or such, now a days most of
those jobs are automated away. What is left is those that involve some amount
of social interaction, thats far from a functional environment when dealing
with autism.

~~~
toddmorey
Thanks! Typo fixed. And very interesting thoughts on the world becoming more
social. I wonder if that's bringing not only more attention to autism, but
also creating a more challenging dynamic. Though I also know people with
autism who are absolutely thriving in technical roles, which were not
available just a few years ago. And, for example, does a move from conferences
and calls to more online tools (Slack, IRC) help, or does it make the social
cues harder?

~~~
digi_owl
As best i can tell someone with autism may find things like Slack and IRC more
comfortable, while those without may not. This because the removal of non-
verbal cues is no issue to the former (less noise to deal with) while
hindering the latter.

------
daveguy
From the article. Assortative Mating -- Mating between people who are alike
made more prevalent through higher college attendance (choice based) and
online dating tools combined with deeper urban dating pools.

Also makes the (dubious?) claim that marginal increased cost of caring for an
autistic child is less than marginal likelihood for increased combined salary.

Moral of the story: make babies outside of your own ethnic group.

~~~
EliRivers
I've said it before and I'll say it again; incest is a spectrum, not an
absolute :) Breed with someone who really doesn't look like you.

More off-topic, I find it creepy when I meet couples who look like each other
and have a string of identical children.

~~~
rustynails
My wife doesn't look like me. We have reasonably different ethnic backgrounds
(common Scottish ancestry maybe 5 generations ago, maybe 5% ethnic commonality
at best). We have an autistic child. So, what's your conclusion?

~~~
EliRivers
My conclusion is that merging genes is essentially rolling the dice, and all
you can do is try to stack the odds in your favour. There are a great many
unfortunate genetic outcomes when it comes to breeding, and you can reduce the
chances of many of them by reducing the level of incest in your breeding.

I bet you already knew this is what I meant and didn't actually need me to
spell it out for you. As an aside, I read elsewhere that you and your wife are
both from Western Europe. That's actually a lot closer than I had in mind; I
said breed with someone who _really_ doesn't look like you. :)

------
worldvoyageur
From the abstract and the introduction:

"

Diagnosed rates of autism spectrum disorders have grown tremendously over the
last few decades. I find that assortative mating may have meaningfully
contributed to the rise. I develop a general model of genes and assortative
mating which shows that small changes in sorting could have large impacts on
the extremes of genetic distributions. I apply my theory to autism, which I
model as the extreme right tail of a genetic formal thinking ability
distribution (systemizing). Using large sample data from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, I find strong support for theories that autism
is connected to systemizing. My mating model shows that increases in the
returns to systemizing, particularly for women, can contribute significantly
to rising autism rates. I provide evidence that mating on systemizing has
actually shifted, and conclude with a rough calculation suggesting that
despite the increase in autism, increased sorting on systemizing has been
socially beneficial.

[...]

if you marry your high school sweetheart, you picked among those people who
happened to be born in your town, but if you marry your college sweetheart,
you have picked among people who chose the same college that you did. More
recently, the internet has made it easier to find people with similar
interests or traits

[...]

one less understood impact of assortative mating is the strong effect it has
on the extremes of distributions. Positive assortative mating on a trait
increases the variance of that trait, and the increase in variance causes
large relative growth at the extremes of the distribution.

[...]

the growing returns to mathematical ability may have contributed significantly
to the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorders. Diagnosed rates of
autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have grown tremendously over the last few
decades, and a number of possible explanations have emerged. One of the more
interesting possibilities is that ASDs are related to a genetic trait called
systemizing, which governs how much our brains are wired for thinking about
formal systems. High levels of systemizing may give ability in pursuits like
mathematics and computer languages.

"

~~~
clock_tower
There's one phrase that jumps out at me here. "If you marry your high school
sweetheart," you have narrow horizons; you're living in what even I, a serious
practicing Catholic with a relatively favorable view of monarchy, am fine with
calling the bad old days: an age when physical mobility was expensive, social
mobility was negligible, and most people lived their whole lives within 100
miles of the place where they were born -- and didn't think they'd missed out
on anything, either. These were the conditions of the United States at least
as recently as the beginning of the Second World War... (See Lee Sandlin's
essay "Losing the War", on this and many related subjects. Note that the title
is primarily about losing the memory of the war -- especially losing the
memory of how strange the experience was.)

So: increased prosperity and increased cultural literacy lead to increased
assortative mating (and to later marriages) -- and thus, among those
predisposed to autism, increased rates of autism... This is probably
inevitable, more or less -- unfortunately...

------
hoopism
I hesitate to comment as I haven't read the paper but skimmed comments and
abstract...

Wouldn't marrying/reproducing in smaller circles historically have been higher
throughout history as transportation and availability would have been less
prevalent?

I would imagine that people tended to marry within their social circle at a
much higher frequency in say the 1800s than they do now.

Also, it's always curious when I read studies about the increase in Autism
rates. I am in the middle of reading Neurotribes and have read elsewhere that
much of that increase can be explained in the broadening of the definition and
increase in social awareness. Perhaps that doesn't account for the entirety of
the increase, but I would be curious as to what percent we're attributing in
this paper.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its possible autism _was_ more widespread in the 1700s-1800s. And with
increased social circles it diminished. And today its increasing again for
some other reason. Some kind of 'Autism Laffer Curve'.

~~~
digi_owl
Or it stuck out less, because so much more of life was toiling at the farm (or
the factory floor) doing a routine.

Thus the "odd fellow" out on that remote farm may well have fallen into what
today goes for mild end Autism, or Aspergers, but functioned because the farm
life was mostly self sufficient.

Sometimes i wonder how many of the old west mountain men were on the mild end,
and opted for a life away from society.

~~~
rustynails
Also, with an increase in women in tertiary education, you have greater chance
of like-minded couples meeting and having children.

------
douche
Seems like common sense. For thousands of years, we've been conducting
assortative mating on our pets and livestock. Within a couple of generations,
we've been able to produce dogs with whatever extremely exaggerated physical
features, and even more tertiary features like aptitude for retrieving and
herding that are desired. Dogs have pretty ridiculous phenotypic plasticity,
but we've done much the same thing with cats, sheep, cattle, horses, goats,
pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals.

My mother has been a home economics, and then a K-5 special education teacher
in the same small school district for over 30 years. She's starting to get the
grandchildren of some of her first students. She almost doesn't have to do the
testing to label them, just look at who the parents and grandparents are.
Looking at stories out of the Valley or Seattle about rates of high-
functioning autism, and it starts to look like the first steps towards the
Morlocks and the Eloi.

One of the more interesting Heinlein stories is Time Enough For Love[1], whose
main character is part of an almost American Kennel Club-esque breeding
program aimed at extending human lifespans through subsidizing assortative
marriages.

People would scream eugenics and cry Nazi if anyone actually tried, but its
interesting to think about what might happen if some insanely rich
megabillionaire like Gates or Zuckerberg devoted their fortunes to a similar
foundation, say, to get highly intelligent people to have more children and
not wait into their mid 30s to start a family.

[1] [http://amzn.to/1NM8g2g](http://amzn.to/1NM8g2g)

~~~
gohrt
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/us/egg-donors-challenge-
pa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/us/egg-donors-challenge-pay-rates-
saying-they-shortchange-women.html)

[https://www.google.com/?#q=sperm+donation](https://www.google.com/?#q=sperm+donation)

------
iamthepieman
Well worth the read. The author outlined a genuinely unique viewpoint and made
me think.

The author presents very thin evidence for his claim that the benefits of two
"systematizing " mating outweighs the chance of them having and raising an
autistic child.

It is an economics paper so the slant towards economics rather than biological
is understandable. However, as the number of links on an individuals graph
grows so too might the need for systematizing to make sense of it all.

All of these have increased in the last several generations:

1\. Number of jobs in a lifetime and requisite number of skills needing to be
learned and updated

2\. Number of friends, coworkers and acquaintances that we are aware of and
interact with.

3\. Amount of information we have access too and are required to process

4\. Number of options and alternatives in almost every area of our lives
(except cable/internet providers of course)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Those things have increased, but have they contributed to socialization
_during childbearing years_? That's the critical measure, right?

~~~
sokoloff
I would think it would be during _mate selection_ years, which for many
pockets of society is well in advance of childbearing years.

------
skeltoac
So how should a person go about choosing a mate?

~~~
clock_tower
I'm wondering about that, too... but I'm beginning to suspect that this is the
wrong question to ask. It sounds a little too much like sexual
objectification, and a little too much like eugenics; it's probably the wrong
way to go about dating and marriage...

Not that this is an endorsement of the "transient, lawless, chaotic sexual
desire will find a way" ethos of rock-and-roll, of course.

------
Epigene
Controversial and insightful, deserves a read.

------
doctorstupid
The author may be autistic.

