The Influence of Peer Genotypes and Behavior on Smoking Outcomes: Evidence from Add Health

Sotoudeh, Ramina; Conley, Dalton; Harris, Kathleen Mullan

doi:10.3386/w24113

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 37 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…Similar work finds that state-level mean PGS for education predicts attainment net the individual's score in HRS data (Domingue et al 2018b). Other recent research deploys quasiexperimental analytic strategies to draw a plausibly causal through-line between the genetic propensity to smoke among school alters, peer smoking behavior, and ego smoking behavior (Sotoudeh, Conley, and Harris 2017). In a similar line of work, researchers have also examined the influence of the parents' genomes on educational outcomes net the children's own endowment, whereby alleles that are not transmitted intergenerationally nevertheless have a putative effect on outcomes through environmental channels, or "genetic nurturance" (Belsky et al 2018;Kong et al 2018;Liu 2018).…”

Section: Spatial Sorting Neighborhood Effects and Attainments And Mechanisms Of Stratificationmentioning

confidence: 85%

Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

Laidley¹,

Vinneau²,

Boardman³

2019

SocScience

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Research on neighborhood effects draws suggestive links between local spatial environments and a range of social, economic, and public health outcomes. Here, we consider the potential role of genetics in the geography of social stratification in the United States using genomic data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that those with genotypes related to higher educational attainment sort into neighborhoods that are better educated and have higher population densities, both descriptively and using formal school and sibling fixed-effects models. We identify four mechanisms through which this geographic sorting on genetic endowment can magnify social stratification: assortative mating, social-genetic effects, gene-by-environment interactions, and gene-by-social-genetic interactions. We examine the presence of the latter three in our data, finding provisional yet suggestive evidence for social-genetic effects that putatively amount to about one-third of the influence of one's own genomic profile. We find no evidence, however, for the presence of interactions between environments and individual genetic background. Collectively, these findings highlight the potential for geographic sorting on genotype to emerge both as a key methodological concern in population genetics and social science research and also a potentially overlooked dimension of social stratification worthy of future study.

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Section: Spatial Sorting Neighborhood Effects and Attainments And Mechanisms Of Stratificationmentioning

confidence: 85%

Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

Laidley¹,

Vinneau²,

Boardman³

2019

SocScience

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“…The idea of social genetic effects originated in evolutionary theory (Moore, Brodie, and Wolf 1997;Wolf et al 1998), and social genetic effects have been observed in animal populations (Petfield et al 2005;Bergsma et al 2008;Canario, Lundeheim, and Bijma 2017;Baud et al 2018). Social science is now beginning to study such effects in human populations; examples include among social peers (Sotoudeh, Conley, and Harris 2017;Domingue et al 2018), sibling pairs (Cawley et al 2017;Kong et al 2018), and parents and their children (Bates et al 2018;Kong et al 2018;Wertz et al 2018). The existence of within-family social genetic effects complicates attempts to derive causal estimates from GWAS.…”

Section: B the Problem Of Confoundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

Trejo

Domingue

2019

Preprint

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statistics from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) can be used to generate a polygenic score (PGS). For complex, behavioral traits, the correlation between individual PGS and phenotype may contain bias alongside the causal effect of the individual's genes (due to geographic, ancestral, and/or socioeconomic confounding). We formalize the recent introduction of a different source of bias in regression models using PGSs: the effects of parental genes on offspring outcomes (i.e. genetic nurture). GWAS do not discriminate between the various pathways through which genes influence outcomes, meaning existing PGSs capture both direct genetic effects and genetic nurture effects. We construct a structural model for genetic effects and show that, unlike other sources of bias in PGSs, the presence of genetic nurture biases PGS coefficients from both naïve OLS (between-family) and family fixed effects (within-family) regressions. This bias is in opposite directions; while naïve OLS estimates are biased upwards, family fixed effects estimates are biased downwards. We quantify this bias for a given trait using two novel parameters that we identify and discuss: (1) the genetic correlation between the direct and nurture effects and (2) the ratio of the SNP heritabilities for the direct and nurture effects.

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“…Finally, a very recent set of studies uses peers' genetic information to address the reflection problem. Sotoudeh et al (2017) use peers' distribution of polygenic scores associated with tobacco use to instrument for peer smoking. A polygenic score is a weighted average or composite score that takes into account information across an individual's entire genome to measure his/her genetic predisposition or risk for a particular outcome.…”

Section: A) Identification Using Instrumental Variables: Peers' Family Background Exogenous Shocks and Genetic Phenotypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Siblings' genes, however, could affect the food that is prepared at home, the promotion of exercise in the household, or other traits of the individual different from BMI, and could thus have an influence on the individual's BMI through other channels. Sotoudeh et al (2017) take this argument further and question the adequacy of using siblings' genes to explain social interactions at the family level. Because siblings' genes will be correlated with parental genes, they may be a proxy for environmental common shocks that result from parents' behavior (food or fitness related) and that influence siblings' weight.…”

Section: C) Reduced Form Models That Combine Contextual and Endogenous Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Interactions in Health Behaviors and Conditions

Balsa¹,

Díaz²

2019

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

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Health behaviors are a major source of morbidity and mortality in the developed and much of the developing world. The social nature of many of these behaviors, such as eating or using alcohol, and the normative connotations that accompany others (i.e., sexual behavior, illegal drug use) make them quite susceptible to peer influence. This chapter assesses the role of social interactions in the determination of health behaviors. It highlights the methodological progress of the past two decades in addressing the multiple challenges inherent in the estimation of peer effects, and notes methodological issues that still need to be confronted. A comprehensive review of the economics empirical literature—mostly for developed countries—shows strong and robust peer effects across a wide set of health behaviors, including alcohol use, body weight, food intake, body fitness, teen pregnancy, and sexual behaviors. The evidence is mixed when assessing tobacco use, illicit drug use, and mental health. The article also explores the as yet incipient literature on the mechanisms behind peer influence and on new developments in the study of social networks that are shedding light on the dynamics of social influence. There is suggestive evidence that social norms and social conformism lie behind peer effects in substance use, obesity, and teen pregnancy, while social learning has been pointed out as a channel behind fertility decisions, mental health utilization, and uptake of medication. Future research needs to deepen the understanding of the mechanisms behind peer influence in health behaviors in order to design more targeted welfare-enhancing policies.

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The Influence of Peer Genotypes and Behavior on Smoking Outcomes: Evidence from Add Health

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States

Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

Social Interactions in Health Behaviors and Conditions

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