Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one’s genes) and nurture (one’s environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper explores the potential uses of genetic data in economics, with … Read more
The Economics and Econometrics of Gene-Environment Interplay
The Effect of Education on Health and Mortality: A Review of Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence
Education is strongly associated with better health and longer lives. However, the extent to which education causes health and longevity is widely debated. We develop a human capital framework to structure the interpretation of the empirical evidence and review evidence on the causal effects of education on mortality and its two most common preventable causes: … Read more
Trends in Absolute Income Mobility in North America and Europe
This paper looks at trends in social mobility in eight wealthy countries and finds significant differences between them. It compares the real incomes of parents and children born between 1960 and 1987, linking the two generations where possible. Where this is not possible, absolute movements between generations are inferred by combining information on moves up … Read more
Stop Meta-Analyzing, Start Instrumenting: Maximizing the Predictive Power of Polygenic Scores
Polygenic scores have become the workhorse for empirical analyses in social-science genetics. Because a polygenic score is constructed using the results of finite-sample Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWASs), it is a noisy approximation of the true latent genetic predisposition to a certain trait. The conventional way of boosting the predictive power of polygenic scores is to … Read more
Dynamic complementarity in skill production: Evidence from genetic endowments and birth order
This study looks at how nature and nurture interact in influencing individuals academic attainment, and finds support for the theory that early life parental inputs increase later gains – especially in those children who have genetic advantages. The researchers used data on a sample of 15,000 siblings, whose genetic and demographic information is stored in … Read more
The Interplay between Maternal Smoking and Genes in Offspring Birth Weight
This paper looks at the relationships between genes, smoking, and birth weight. It finds that each additional daily cigarette smoked during pregnancy reduces birthweight by between 20 and 40 grams, regardless of the childs’s genetic predisposition. The researchers used information from a sample of 5000 mother-baby pairs in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and … Read more