Triangulating Approaches to Evaluate the Genetic and Environmental Composition of Socioeconomic Status
Joakim Coleman Ebeltoft (Promenta Research Center, University of Oslo)
Abstract
Indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) are similar across generations, due to interplay of genetic and environmental modes of transmission. Depending on the measures, methods, and sample applied, estimated contributions of genetic and environmental factors to SES vary substantially, rendering them unsuitable for comparison. To enable comparison across SES indicators and statistical methods, we use register based measures of education, occupation, income, and wealth, across four heritability methods in the same population-wide sample consisting of parents aged 35-45. While education consistently had the highest heritability, estimates of the other indicies varied across methods. In addition, we applied dimensionality reducing techniques and retained a one-dimensional structure for phenotypic, genetic, and shared environmental variance components, and a two-dimensional structure for non-shared environment variance components. Our results help to build an intuition for comparing methods and indicators, and yield insight into the relationship between the subcomponents of SES in Norwegian parents.
Genetic associations with educational field choices in >460,000 individuals
Rosa Catherine Gillespie Cheesman (Promenta Research Center, University of Oslo)
Abstract
Choice of education is not only made based on its length but also by the field of study. Yet little is known about the genetic architecture of educational fields. First, we conducted genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of 10 broad fields of education using population-wide administrative data from Finland and Norway (n=463,134). We identified 23 independent genome-wide significant loci associated with 7 of the 10 fields of education. Second, we showed that our GWAS are robust to controls for social stratification. SNP-based heritability estimates for single fields of study (7% on average) were not significantly attenuated when controlling for birthplace and parents’ fields. Polygenic scores for fields calculated based on our GWAS significantly predict their respective field choices in an independent Dutch cohort (n=36,373), and effect sizes were alike when adjusting for parental polygenic indices, indicating that the GWAS tagged direct genetic pathways. Third, we discovered two key components explaining the genetic associations with field choices, characterised by Technical versus Social tendencies (genetically correlated with Extraversion and Agreeableness), and Exploration versus Conformism tendencies (genetically correlated with Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness). Weaving together genetics, traits and social contexts, we create a fuller picture of the underpinnings of educational choices, shifting the focus of social science genomic research from the conventional hierarchy of attainments, towards multidimensional tastes.
Collegamento Microsoft Teams
Organizzazione
Nicola Barban