Genetic Endowments and Wealth Inequality

Barth, Daniel; Papageorge, Nicholas W.; Thom, Kevin

doi:10.3386/w24642

Cited by 53 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…We can see that many respondents report implausibly small and large numbers. This could reflect several factors, including misinformation about the spread of illness, difficulties with probabilistic thinking, which is well-documented in the literature (see e.g., Barth, Papageorge, and Thom (2020) 14 In any case, these interpretational difficulties will limit conclusions we can draw using some of the beliefs variables.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Protecting Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Papageorge

Zahn

Bélot

et al. 2020

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120

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Disease spread is in part a function of individual behavior. We examine the factors predicting individual behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States using novel data collected by Belot et al. (2020). Among other factors, we show that people with lower income, less flexible work arrangements (e.g., an inability to tele-work) and lack of outside space at home are less likely to engage in behaviors, such as social distancing, that limit the spread of disease. We also find evidence that region, gender and beliefs predict behavior. Broadly, our findings align with typical relationships between health and socioeconomic status. Moreover, they suggest that the burden of measures designed to stem the pandemic are unevenly distributed across sociodemographic groups in ways that affect behavior and thus potentially the spread of illness. Policies that assume otherwise are unlikely to be effective or sustainable.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Protecting Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Papageorge

Zahn

Bélot

et al. 2020

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120

132

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“…In relating genes predicting education to an aggregated measure of success in the labor market, their study provides important cross-validation to our own work, though with a different sample and a substantially different set of outcomes and research questions. Finally, Barth, Papageorge, and Thom (2018) show evidence that the EA score predicts wealth in part through financial decision-making and probabilistic thinking.…”

Section: Genetic Data and Genome-wide Association Studiesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

Papageorge

Thom

2016

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically disadvantaged households are less likely to go to college when compared to individuals with the same genetic score, but from higher-SES households. Our findings provide support for the idea that childhood SES is an important moderator of the economic returns to genetic endowments. Moreover, the finding that childhood poverty limits the educational attainment of high-ability individuals suggests the existence of unrealized human potential.JEL Classification: I24, J24

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“…While preliminary efforts of adding polygenic scores to social science models have been made (Conley et al 2015;Davies et al 2015;Domingue et al 2015;Krapohl and Plomin 2015; Barth, Papageorge, and Thom 2018;Belsky et al 2018;Liu 2018;Papageorge and Thom 2018;Trejo et al 2018), this study endeavors to bring three contributions toward the field: (1) I confirm the effects of social inheritance and genetic heritability on an offspring's educational achievement using the most recent genome-wide association (GWAS) results (Lee et al 2018) in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). (2) This study tests the three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment and describes the influences of parental education on the realization of genetic potential.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion

Lin

2020

Social Science Research

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Recently, several genome-wide association studies of educational attainment have found education-related genetic variants and enabled the integration of human inheritance into social research. This study incorporates the newest education polygenic score (Lee et al. 2018) into sociological research, and tests three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7,625), I report three findings. First, a standard deviation increase in the education polygenic score is associated with a 60% increase in the likelihood of advancing to the next level of education, while a standard deviation increase in parental education results in a 68% increase. Second, supporting the Saunders hypothesis, the genetic effect becomes 11% smaller when parental education is one standard deviation higher, indicating that highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation. Finally, the genetic effect is slightly greater for the younger cohort (1942~59) than the older cohort (1920~41). The findings strengthen the existing literature on the social influences in helping children achieve their innate talents.

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Genetic Endowments and Wealth Inequality

Cited by 53 publications

References 37 publications

Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Protecting Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Socio-Demographic Factors Associated with Self-Protecting Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study

The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion

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