Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight and Life Chances

Conley, Dalton; Bennett, Neil G.

doi:10.2307/2657467

Cited by 317 publications

(245 citation statements)

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“…This absence of birthweight effects contradicts the findings of Conley and Bennett (2000), who used singleton comparisons, which fail to address underlying genetic differences or experiences in utero. These results also contradict the findings of Behrman and Rosenzweig (2004), who used twin pairs.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 47%

Genetic Interactions with Prenatal Social Environment

Conley

Rauscher

2013

J Health Soc Behav

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Numerous studies report gene-environment interactions, suggesting that specific alleles have different effects on social outcomes depending on environment. In all these studies, however, environmental conditions are potentially endogenous to unmeasured genetic characteristics. That is, it could be that the observed interaction effects actually reflect underlying genetic tendencies that lead individuals into certain environments. What is critical to move this literature forward is random environmental variation that we know is not correlated with innate characteristics of subjects. We exploit a natural experiment that randomizes a particular stressor-birth weight discordance within twin pairs-to address this challenge and ask: Do random differences in early environment (prenatal nutrition) moderate genetic effects on depression, delinquency, or Grade Point Average (GPA)? Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the only consistently significant allele-birth weight interaction we reveal works in the opposite direction of Caspi et al.'s classic finding regarding the interaction of maltreatment with genetic variation in the serotonin transporter promoter. Less robust interactions found for DRD2 and MAOA are consistent with this pattern that reverses prior findings. These results do not necessarily overturn existing research but support our methodological point that gene-environment research must address endogeneity.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 47%

Genetic Interactions with Prenatal Social Environment

Conley

Rauscher

2013

J Health Soc Behav

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“…Children from families of low socioeconomic status are more likely to begin life in poor health because fetal and birth complications are more prevalent in the lower socioeconomic strata. 12,13 Poor newborn health is known to have continuity to adult health. 14 In this study, we aimed to control for perinatal health before assessing the association between childhood socioeconomic status and adult health.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Association between children's experience of socioeconomic disadvantage and adult health: a life-course study

et al. 2002

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“…But this is changing (e.g., Udry 1995;Conley and Bennett 2000;Shanahan, Hofer, and Shanahan 2003). 2 Wilson (1998) introduced the concept of consilience, in which methods 1Direct correspondence to Joseph Lee Rodgers, Department of Psychology, 455 West Lindsey Street, Room 809, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019. jrodgers@ou.edu.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education and Cognitive Ability as Direct, Mediating, or Spurious Influences on Female Age at First Birth: Behavior Genetic Models Fit to Danish Twin Data

Rodgers

Kohler

McGue

et al. 2008

American Journal of Sociology

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The authors study education and cognitive ability as predictors of female age at first birth (AFB), using monozygotic and dizygotic female twin pairs from the Middle-Aged Danish Twin survey. Using mediated regression, they replicate findings linking education (and not cognitive ability) to AFB. But in a behavior genetic model, both relationships are absorbed within a latent variable measuring the shared family environment. Two interpretations are relevant. First, variance in AFB emerges from differences between families, not differences between sisters within the same family. Second, even in a natural laboratory sensitive to genetic variance in female fertility-during demographic transition-the variance in AFB was non-genetic, located instead within the shared environment.Biological thinking and genetic models have not often been a part of the sociologist's toolbox in the past. But this is changing (e.g., Udry 1995;Conley and Bennett 2000;Shanahan, Hofer, and Shanahan 2003). 2 Wilson (1998) introduced the concept of consilience, in which methods 1Direct correspondence to Joseph Lee Rodgers, Department of Psychology, 455 West Lindsey Street, Room 809, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019. jrodgers@ou.edu. 2 Similar concerns date back further in some of the other social sciences. In economics, e.g., the use of twin data to control for unobserved genetic and other aspects of family background and, in some cases, to present heritability decompositions of phenotypes goes back at least to Behrman and Taubman (1976) and Behrman et al. (1980), with a resurgence a little over a decade ago that focused on controlling for measurement error and using monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins together to estimate intrahousehold allocation responses to individual-specific genetic endowments (Ashenfelter and Krueger 1994;Behrman, Rosenzweig, and Taubman 1994). This work in economics overlaps with the interests of sociologists; it has focused, e.g., on estimating the impact of schooling on wages and on mate selection, the impact of maternal schooling on child schooling, and the impact of fertility on happiness (Behrman and Rosenzweig 2002; Kohler, Behrman, and Skytthe 2005 and theories from different disciplines merge into metadisciplines, fringe disciplines, or subdisciplines. Wilson noted an asymmetry between the social and medical sciences, suggesting that the integration of social science methods into the medical sciences has been relatively smooth, whereas medical and biological thinking (and especially genetic reasoning) has not been as easily integrated into many areas of social science, including sociology. The emerging subdiscipline of biodemography (e.g., Vaupel et al. 1998;Rodgers and Kohler 2003;Wachter and Bulatao 2003) illustrates that this asymmetry is beginning to abate, though it bears noting that scholars from outside sociology are providing much of the impetus for this type of consilience.Social science research is filled with apparently causal relationships that, when subjected to modern sc...

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Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight and Life Chances

Cited by 317 publications

References 32 publications

Genetic Interactions with Prenatal Social Environment

Genetic Interactions with Prenatal Social Environment

Association between children's experience of socioeconomic disadvantage and adult health: a life-course study

Education and Cognitive Ability as Direct, Mediating, or Spurious Influences on Female Age at First Birth: Behavior Genetic Models Fit to Danish Twin Data

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