Individual and Social Genomic Contributions to Educational and Neighborhood Attainments: Geography, Selection, and Stratification in the United States
Open accessAbstract
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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The unexplained remainder of the mate-pair PGI correlation is due to assortment on phenotypes correlated with the EA PGI other than EA, cognitive performance, and vocabulary-possibly including personality traits-and sources of social homogamy other than genetic ancestry captured by the top 40 PCs-possibly including geographic location at courtship age, socioeconomic status, and social class.
“This remainder is due to assortment on phenotypes correlated with the EA PGI other than EA, cognitive performance, and vocabulary—possibly including various personality traits42-44—and sources of social homogamy other than genetic ancestry captured by the top 40 PCs—possibly including geographic location at courtship age45,46, socioeconomic status, and social class47.”
From Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals (2022) · cites this paper as [45]
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- Authors
- Laidley, T., Vinneau, J., & Boardman, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Venue
- Sociological Science
- Publisher
- Society for Sociological Science
- Published
- 2019
- Volume
- 6
- Pages
- 580-608
- ISSN
- 2330-6696 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2986144428
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 2.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Sociological Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD066613)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Keywords
- neighborhood effects, educational attainment, social stratification, genetic endowment, assortative mating, social genetic effects, gene-environment interaction, population density, neighborhood selection, adolescent to adult health
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