 The causal effect of genetic variants linked to cognitive and non-cognitive skills on education and labor market outcomesThomas Buser, Rafael Ahlskog, Magnus Johannesson, Philipp Koellinger and Sven Oskarsson Labour Economics, 2024, vol. 90, issue C Abstract: We estimate the effect of genetic variants that are associated with differences in cognitive and non-cognitive skills on labor market and education outcomes by linking genetic data from individuals in the Swedish Twin Registry to government registry data. Genes are fixed over the life cycle and genetic differences between full siblings are random, making it possible to establish the causal effects of within-family genetic variation. We show that polygenic indices associated with cognitive skills and personality traits significantly affect income, occupation, and educational attainment. By comparing estimates that use only within-family variation to OLS estimates with and without socioeconomic controls, our results also provide indications of the degree of (residual) confounding, which can be useful for research conducted in datasets that do not contain sibling pairs. Overall, our results indicate that education and labor market outcomes are partially the result of a genetic lottery. Keywords: Personality traits; Economic preferences; Cognitive skills; Labor markets; Education; Polygenic indices (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:90:y:2024:i:c:s0927537124000393 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2024.102544 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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