Sources of Inequality at Birth: The Interplay Between Genes and Parental Socioeconomic Status

2026-04-28

AI Summary

This study investigates how genetic endowments at birth and family socioeconomic status (SES) jointly shape multidimensional adult outcomes. Leveraging three longitudinal social science datasets, the authors integrate polygenic indices (PGIs) with a latent SES variable constructed from parental education and father’s occupation to systematically examine their main effects and interaction across 45 adult phenotypes. This work presents the first comprehensive assessment of gene–environment interplay in large-scale social samples, revealing that both genetic propensity and family SES exhibit significant independent associations with outcomes spanning health and human capital. However, the observed gene–environment interactions are consistently weak, challenging prevailing theories that emphasize such interactions as central drivers of social inequality.

Abstract

The start of a human's life can be characterized by two lotteries: that of your genes (nature) and the family you were born into (nurture). These set in motion a trajectory, from birth onward, in health and human capital. Leveraging three longitudinal social-science data sets, we systematically analyze the relationship between an individual's genotype, the socioeconomic status (SES) of the families they grew up in, and their realized traits in adulthood. We proxy an individual's genetic predisposition by polygenic indexes (PGIs) and family SES by a latent factor of parental education and father's (former) occupational status. We then investigate how PGIs, parental SES, and their interaction contribute to later-life outcomes across a range of forty-five socioeconomic, anthropometric, health, behavioral, and personality traits. We find strong genetic and socioeconomic associations with these phenotypes, but no evidence of sizable gene-environment interactions.

Problem

• inequality at birth
• genes
• parental socioeconomic status
• gene-environment interaction
• polygenic indexes

Innovation

• polygenic indexes
• socioeconomic status
• gene-environment interaction
• longitudinal data
• human capital