Social Science Methods for Twins Data: Integrating Causality, Endowments, and Heritability
Open accessAbstract
Twins have been extensively used in economics, sociology, and behavioral genetics to investigate the role of genetic endowments on a broad range of social, demographic, and economic outcomes. However, the focus in these literatures has been distinct.: The economic literature has been primarily concerned with the need to control for unobserved endowments--including as an important subset, genetic endowments--in analyses that attempt to establish the impact of one variable, often schooling, on a variety of economic, demographic, and health outcomes. Behavioral genetic analyses have mostly been concerned with decomposing the variation in the outcomes of interest into genetic, shared environmental, and non-shared environmental components, with recent multivariate analyses investigating the contributions of genes and the environment to the correlation and causation between variables. Despite the fact that twins studies and the recognition of the role of endowments are central to both of these literatures, they have mostly evolved independently. In this paper we develop formally the relationship between the economic and behavioral genetic approaches to the analyses of twins, and we develop an integrative approach that combines the identification of causal effects, which dominates the economic literature, with the decomposition of variances and covariances into genetic and environmental factors that are the primary goal of behavioral genetic approaches. We apply this integrative ACE-beta approach to an illustrative investigation of the impact of schooling on several demographic outcomes such as fertility and nuptiality and health.
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Twins have been extensively used to control for genetic and other background, unobserved, confounding factors.
“Kohler, Behrman, and Schnittker (2011, p. 91) noted that, “[T]wins have been extensively used to control for genetic and other background, unobserved, confounding factors.”
From Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins (2020) · cites this paper as Kohler, Behrman, and Schnittker (2011)
Using the family fixed-effects model, the study leveraged nationally representative twin data to take advantage of the natural experiment that twins provide by sharing their family environment and their genetic endowments.
“Using the family fixed‐effects model (Kohler et al., 2011), we leveraged nationally representative twin data to take advantage of the natural experiment that twins provide by the fact that they share their family environment and their genetic endowments.”
From Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins (2020) · cites this paper as Kohler et al., 2011
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- Authors
- Kohler, H.-P., Behrman, J. R., & Schnittker, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kohler, Hans-Peter
- Venue
- Biodemography and Social Biology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2011-01-01
- Volume
- 57
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 88-141
- ISSN
- 1948-5565 (ISSN-L)
- 1948-5573
- PMC
- PMC3158495
- OpenAlex
- W2013583398
- Cited by
- 116
- References
- 99
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 18.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Biodemography and Social Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) (submittedVersion)
- Scholarly Commons (University of Pennsylvania) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD043417, R01HD046144)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Assisted Reproductive Technology and Twin Pregnancy
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Keywords
- twins, genetic endowment, heritability, causal effects, behavioral genetics, school education, fertility, nuptiality, health outcomes, social science methodology
- MeSH terms
- Data Interpretation, Statistical, Economics, Epidemiologic Methods, Genetics, Behavioral, Humans, Models, Genetic, Causality, Twin Studies as Topic
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