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

Pietro Biroli, Nicolau Martin-Bassols, Andries T. Marees, Hans van Kippersluis, Cornelius A. Rietveld, Pia Arce, Kevin Thom, Stephanie von Hinke, Jeremy Vollen and Titus Galama

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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.

Date: 2026-04
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