Marital correlation for anthropometric characteristics in Brazilian Indians.

A total of 336 couples from 10 villages of three Brazilian Indian tribes was studied in relation to 15 anthropometric characteristics. Correlation coefficients between husband and wife were generally positive, none of the negative ones reaching a probability level of 1% or less. Thirteen correlations attained this level, but none of the traits behaved similarly in the three tribes. Height adjustment taking into consideration the correlation between mates for age did not much alter the correlation coefficients, but a larger influence was observed after allowance for temporal effects. A significant pair of canonical variables was obtained considering sitting height and leg length, but factors related to facial and bone form, extracted through principal-components analysis, yielded correlations insignificantly different from zero.