A family study of anthropometric traits in a Punjabi community: I. Introduction and familial correlations.

Data on 40 anthropometric measurements from 144 nuclear families in Chandigarh, India, are presented. Most families contain a pair of monozygotic or dizygotic twins, one or more singleton siblings, and their parents. Familial correlations for age-sex standardized, normalized measurements are estimated by maximum likelihood for marital, parent-child, sibling, and twin pairs. Heterogeneity tests for sex-specific subtype correlations male-male, male-female, female-female) indicate that the sex of the relative plays no significant role in the magnitude of the familial correlations except for maternal effects and differences among male and female twin pairs for a few of the variables. Marital correlations are high for body measurements, but not for head or face variables. Twin correlations seem to indicate a higher level of heritability than correlations from other family members.