Project description
Understanding links between socioeconomic status and children’s mental health
The socioeconomic status (SES) of parents and the quality of the neighbourhood are factors that can help determine a child’s mental health and educational performance. Childhood is a vulnerable period and increasing inequality affects the way children grow up. The EU-funded GeoGen project proposes an innovative paradigm generalising temporal, spatial, social, genetic and individual levels of inference to understand how and why early life socioeconomic position is associated with mental health and educational performance. The project will study genomically similar children growing up in different families in different places at different times to jointly evaluate hypotheses on selection, causation, and risk and protective factors for mental health and academic results. GeoGen will use the full genealogy and year-by-year event data from Norway since 1940.
Objective
Surging inequality is a defining feature of the world children grow up in today. The neighborhood they live in stages a primary developmental context where this feature of our present time plays out. Children’s demographic and socio-economic status (SES) is given by the status of their parents. Parental and neighborhood SES is associated with child mental health and educational performance, and childhood is a vulnerable period. To understand how and why early life socioeconomic position is linked to mental health and educational performance, I propose a groundbreaking paradigm generalizing temporal, spatial, social, genetic, and individual levels of inference. I will do this by having genomically similar children growing up in different families at different places at different times. These multitudes of counterfactuals will allow me to jointly evaluate hypotheses on selection and causation and risk and protection factors for mental health and academic outcomes.
The GeoGen study will render a new understanding of (a) how transmission of risk is transmitted across generations, (b) how early mental health is an antecedent of academic failure, (c) the interactions between genetic risk and protective contextual factors, and (c) characteristics of schools and neighborhoods that are optimal for children’s psychological development.
I will use Norway since 1940 as a laboratory (n=8 400 000) with registries giving full genealogy and year-by-year event data on place of residence, indicators of SES, mental health, and educational performance. Within this, I will nest a population-based cohort study comprising genotyping of families (n=240 000 in 110 000 families) and a wide array of survey data, such as non-cognitive skills. The combination of having data on all people in all schools and neighborhoods over time allows me to do an unprecedented study on the gene-environment interplay between risk and protective factors for mental health and academic outcomes.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG
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0313 Oslo
Norway
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