Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern...

Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern...

This paper exploits molecular genetic data to quantify genetic confounding in parent-child educational outcomes. We develop a model of the intergenerational transmission of education based on insights from the literature on social science genetics. The model distinguishes between two types of...

Recent advances in sociogenomics offer new opportunities to integrate genetic and epigenetic measures into social science research on human lifespan development. Now, German social science cohorts have followed suit with this global trend. We anticipate that the integration of genetic measures...

When did Sweden become equal? This question has far-reaching implications for our understanding of Swedish history, as well as for theories about inequality, institutions, and politics more broadly. In this article, we present the first multidimensional comparative analysis of the development of...

Meritocratic fairness justifies inequality when it stems from performance. Yet performance is influenced by one's genetics. I investigate whether individuals' redistribution preferences are affected by their beliefs about genetics' role in generating performance inequality. In an incentivized...

Sibling correlations in socioeconomic status are one of the key measures of equality of opportunity and social mobility, providing an omnibus examination of the importance of family background. Typically, these correlations are interpreted as the combined effects of shared sibling background and...

Are genetic differences between people associated with their career choices? We link data from a large sample of genotyped individuals to Swedish government register data on study major and occupation. Our data contains polygenic indices that summarize genetic variants linked to several...

We study the heritability of risk, uncertainty, and time preferences using a field experiment with a large sample of adult twins. We also offer a meta-analysis of existing findings. Our field study introduces a novel empirical approach that marries behavioral genetics with structural...

Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern...

We examine whether genome-wide summary measures of genetic risk known as polygenic indices (PGIs) provide new insights into the efficacy of the Lung Health Study (LHS)-a large, randomized controlled trial (RCT) that evaluated the effect of a smoking cessation intervention program on cessation...

Progress in understanding the role of genetics in intergenerational socioeconomic persistence has been hampered by challenges of measurement and identification. We examine how the genetics of one generation influences the SES of the next by linking genetic data from the Dutch Lifelines Cohort to...

The longstanding debate over whether human capabilities and skills are shaped more by "nature" or "nurture" has been revitalized by recent advances in genetics, particularly in the use of polygenic scores (PGSs) to proxy for genetic endowments. Yet, we argue that PGSs embed not only direct...

On the one hand, gene editing is a process of modifying the existing genetic material of an organism. On the other hand, genetic modification involves the introduction of genetic material from another organism. Gene-editing technology is a powerful tool that can boost sustainable farming, fight...

Socioeconomic (SES) gaps in academic achievement are well documented. We show that a very similar gap exists with respect to genetic differences measured by a polygenic score (PGS) for educational attainment. The genetic gap increases during elementary school, but only among the low SES...

We show that molecular variation in DNA related to cognition, personality, health, and body shape, predicts an individual’s equity market participation and risk aversion. Moreover, the molecular genetic endowments predict individuals’ return perceptions, most of which we find to be...

We use a novel approach to explore how people sort into different careers based on their personality skills. We link genetic data from individuals in the Swedish Twin Registry to government register data, making use of new polygenic indices that capture the genetic predispositions of individuals...

Socioeconomic (SES) gaps in academic achievement are well documented. We show that a very similar gap exists with respect to genetic differences measured by a polygenic score (PGS) for educational attainment. The genetic gap increases during elementary school, but only among the low SES...

We develop and estimate a life-cycle consumption savings model in which observed genetic variation is allowed to affect wealth accumulation through several distinct channels. We focus on genetic markers that predict educational attainment, aggregated into a predictive index called a polygenic...

We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find...

Reductions in the cost of genetic sequencing have enabled the construction of large datasets including both genetic and phenotypic data. Based on these datasets, polygenic scores (PGSs) summarizing an individual's genetic propensity for educational attainment have been constructed. It is by now...

Genetic factors play a major role in the development of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Observable genetic factors could impact household planning and medical care if they contain actionable information, meaning that they i) are associated with significant harms, ii) reflect...

Since the mapping of the human genome in 2004, biologists have demonstrated genetic links to the expression of several income-enhancing physical traits. To illustrate how heredity produces intergenerational economic effects, this study uses one trait, beauty, to infer the extent to which...

Rapid progress has been made in identifying links between human genetic variation and social and behavioral phenotypes. Applications in mainstream economics are beginning to emerge. This review aims to provide the background needed to bring the interested economist to the frontier of...

Using a large sample of 1,120 twins, we estimated the heritability of trust using four distinct measures of trust - domain-specific political trust, general self-reported trust, and incentivized behavioral trust and trustworthiness. Our results highlight the importance of measuring trust in a...

We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find...

We use rich administrative data from Denmark to assess medical theories that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heritable condition transmitted through underlying parental skills. Positing that occupational choices reflect skills, we create two separate occupation-based skill measures and find...

Two family-specific lotteries take place during conception- a social lottery that determines who our parents are and which environment we grow up in, and a genetic lottery that determines which part of their genomes our parents pass on to us. The outcomes of these lotteries create inequalities...

Research into the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage has long been criticized for not paying sufficient attention to genetics. This study is based on the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and administrative register data on 25000 genotyped Norwegian...

Wealth is highly correlated between parents and their children; however, little is known about the extent to which these relationships are genetic or determined by environmental factors. We use administrative data on the net wealth of a large sample of Swedish adoptees merged with similar...

This book is a compilation of topics for students in biological sciences, Zoology in particular, who wish to pursue MS in Genetics, Molecular Biology and/or Biotechnology. It contains 15 lectures on vital topics like biological variations, polygenic inheritance, speciation, metabolic disorders...