Parental consanguinity refers to the union between individuals who are biologically related by common ancestry. Such marriages are common in many populations due to cultural, social, economic, and geographical factors. In human population genetics, consanguinity has important biological consequences because related individuals are more likely to carry identical copies of genes inherited from a common ancestor. As a result, their offspring have an increased probability of inheriting the same recessive allele from both parents, leading to greater homozygosity in the genome. One of the most significant biological consequences of parental consanguinity is an increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders. Many harmful recessive alleles remain hidden in heterozygous individuals without producing disease. However, when close relatives marry, there is a greater chance that both parents carry the same deleterious recessive allele inherited from a shared ancestor. Their children are therefore more likely to inherit two copies of the defective gene, resulting in the expression of inherited disorders such as cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria, sickle cell disease, thalassemia, Tay-Sachs disease, and several rare metabolic disorders, depending on the population. Consanguinity increases the coefficient of inbreeding (F), which measures the probability that an individual receives two identical alleles