https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/ (Autism As a Disorder of High Intelligence [2016])
> The hypothesis that autism risk in offspring is positively associated with high parental intelligence, and high socioeconomic status, traces to Kanner (1943, p. 248), who stated, referring to autistic children, that “they all come of highly intelligent families,” at high levels of educational, socioeconomic and occupational achievement (Kanner and Lesser, 1958; Rimland, 1964). King (1975) reviewed a set of demographic studies motivated by these findings, and reported strong support for the pattern of high socioeconomic status linked with autism, including support from studies (e.g., Lotter, 1966, 1967) that checked all young children (of 8–10 years) in a given geographic area for infantile autism, and thus should be largely independent of confounding ascertainment or help-seeking biases, variation in access to relevant health care, or variation in parental awareness.
Note that these observations are 60+ years old. Read the entire "Socioeconomic status" section of the paper I cite. They argue the same and state genetic testing should be done to back it up. These seems an ideal study for 23andme (yes, yes, I know how a vocal minority feels about this org).
1. It sounds like de-novo mutations are the best theory for 70%+ of autism cases per this paper, right?
2. Does anybody track the "base rate" of de-novo mutations / generation in humans? If so, how many generations back do we have data for, and how many regions?
3. Aren't we seeing an increase in autism is developed nations even within poor uneducated families with young parents?