Areas with high cousin marriage rates 'more likely to claim benefits', figures reveal

The Daily Mail ^ | 05 Oct 2025 | GABRIEL MILLARD-CLOTHIER

[MinorityRepublican]

Communities with high rates of cousin marriages are significantly more likely to claim disability benefits, according to new data seen by The Mail on Sunday.

Analysis shows a rise of a quarter in the handouts in areas where the practice is more common.

In Bradford, where one in six children is born to parents who are cousins, disability benefits are 23 per cent higher than average, costing the taxpayer millions of pounds more every week.

Experts say that the increase is down to the higher risk of birth defects and deformities – which include blindness, hearing loss and schizophrenia – when a child’s parents are so closely related.

The news comes after the MoS revealed last week that the NHS has been accused of ‘taking the knee’ to political correctness after it published guidance advocating cousin marriage, saying it offered benefits such as ‘stronger extended family support systems’.

Cousin marriage is most common in British-Pakistani communities, which account for around

Four per cent of all births nationwide but about 30 per cent of recessive gene disorders.

Experts believe that the resulting birth defects have caused 20 per cent of infant deaths in Birmingham, 20 per cent in Redbridge in East London, and 53 per cent of all South Asian infant deaths in Bradford.

Dr Patrick Nash, director of the Pharos Foundation social science research group in Oxford, said: ‘These chronically inbred populations are at much higher risk of death, serious disability, non-fatal development issues and lifelong ill-health.

‘Rogue statistics and terrible public health advice are serving to minimise the dangers of cousin marriage and disguise the true scale of the problem.’

Richard Holden, the Tory MP who is campaigning to ban the practice, said: ‘First cousin marriage undermines everything modern Britain stands for in terms of personal freedom and integration.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; United Kingdom; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: consanguinous; unitedkingdom

[Secret Agent Man]

If you didnt know you were cousins?

[Jeff Chandler]

If you didnt know you were cousins?

Now you're getting into weird fantasies.

[jean michael]

It’s a big cash cow for the medical industry up there.

[jmacusa]

EEEEWWW!

Well... maybe...

[jmacusa]

Wow. That is strange.

And wholly unfair to those fellow Americans who are so often the butt of cruel jokes.

In reality it was quite common among the upper classes in America, the ''Titans of industry and society that engaged in ''arranged'' cousin marriages. Franklin and Elenore Roosevelt were fourth cousins.

[Secret Agent Man]

There are cases of siblings that did not grow up together, not knowing what the other looks like, and have wound up dating. These kinds of things are documented to happen.

[duckbutt]

There have been several issues (one was a gynecologist) who donated sperm prolifically and through the anonymity of IVF laws, actually resulted in half brothers/sisters marrying because they didn't know the origins of the IVF donors their parents used.

[alexander_busek]

Strange but True: West Virginia and Kentucky are among the strictest states concerning first-cousin marriages

Makes you wonder: Why did those two states even find it necessary to enact such legislation in the first place, huh?

Regards,

[alexander_busek]

I’ve always wondered if all those ‘gods’ in India depicted in their art and statues back in antiquity were derived from a superstitious explaination for all the defects and deformities born from children whose parents were closely related.

1. Devotees are flocking to a remote Indian town to worship an eight-limbed baby as the reincarnation of a Hindu God...

2. Conjoined twin with single head and fused chest born in remote Indian town last week seen as reincarnation of Lord Ganesh by increasing numbers of Hindu worshippers

3. A baby girl born with what is being called a "trunk" in the Indian city of Aligarh is attracting flocks of worshippers who believe the girl is an incarnation of Hindu God, Lord Ganesha.

Regards,

[Rocco DiPippo]

Bwahahahahaha! You killed it!

[MMusson]

In the Muslim world it’s “Cousins with Benefits”

[caddie]

Yes their ‘family tree’ is bamboo.

[anton]

There are cousins and then there are cousins. In some families the cousins are part of a unified family, growing up together, having the same experiences, knowing each others siblings and ancestors, etc. Then there are first cousins who have never met, have grow up in completely different worlds, even different countries and from very large, disconnected families.

I worked with a guy who married his step sister. His father had married the mother, the blended family lived together in the same house and he married her pretty much as soon as she was of age. Both the father and son marrying the mom and daughter.

Now that was really creepy.

[Salman]

Communities with high rates of cousin marriages are significantly more likely to claim disability benefits ...

More to the point ...

[Iron Munro]

White people - Still the only ethnic group that can be attacked and discriminated against.

[Beowulf9]

Time to hit the 21st century and see this for what it is.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Its legal to marry your first cousin in GA but I don’t think hardly anyone does it. 😣

[jmacusa]

“I work with a guy who married his step=sister’’.

Who paid for the wedding?

[anton]

Haha! There was a lot of widow $$$money involved. Not saying these two teamed up to get it but it sure looked like it.

[jmacusa]

True story: Saddam Hussein's first wife was his first cousin. That union produced his two sons Uday and Qusay. Fine, upstanding, stalwart young they were. Just da kind to take home to meet me sister, sure 'n' begorrah!