Societal openness, normative flux, and the social modification of heritability

Project Information

OPENFLUX

Grant agreement ID: 818420

DOI

10.3030/818420

Project closed

EC signature date 27 February 2019

Start date 1 July 2019

End date 31 December 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 987 231,00

EU contribution

€ 1 987 231,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - OPENFLUX (Societal openness, normative flux, and the social modification of heritability)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The OPENFLUX project uses genetic data and methods to study how our social surroundings shape our opportunities and life choices—in short, how important are genetics, families, and environments in determining life outcomes. Important research on equality of opportunity, educational expansion, changing family structures, and the transmission of advantage between generations all motivate a role for genetics. Rather than treating genetic methods as silent on context, the project turns this criticism into a tool by studying how genetic effects vary across societies, time periods, and institutions.

These questions matter for policy. Whether inequality is driven by inherited differences or by social circumstances shapes what interventions can work—from widening educational access to reducing poverty across generations.

The project has three objectives. The first is to examine whether societies have become more open over time, as theory suggests that inherited differences matter more when opportunity structures expand or social norms are unsettled. Results show limited overall support for this idea, but with a clear exception for women: as barriers to women's advancement fell across birth cohorts, social background influences on their educational and income outcomes declined, while men's showed little change.

The second objective is to examine the balance between genetic and environmental influences on life outcomes. For most outcomes, the environment shared by siblings within a family proved less important than sociological theory predicts. The clearest exception is parental divorce, where family disruption reduces the degree to which children can realise their inherited potential.

The third objective is to examine what parents transmit to children beyond their DNA. A key finding is that the indirect influence of parents' genes on children's outcomes reflects multigenerational social inequality across extended family networks, not simply parenting processes inside the household. Social origins also have genuine independent effects on adult outcomes.

Taken together, the results show that genetic methods can directly test social theories about inequality and opportunity, and that context—gender equality, family structure, institutional setting—consistently shapes whether inherited differences translate into outcomes.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over the project period, OPENFLUX produced a substantial number of peer-reviewed journal articles, drawing on linked Norwegian administrative population records, twin-family studies, a major Norwegian health cohort (Moba), and international comparative data.

Findings from the social-change strand showed that as gender barriers in education and the labor market fell across Norwegian birth cohorts, genetic influences on women's educational attainment and lifetime income rose markedly, while men's showed little comparable change. The correlation between cognitive ability and educational attainment weakened steadily across cohorts rather than strengthening, as a simple meritocracy story would predict. Comparative analyses showed that educational systems and welfare-state arrangements condition how strongly genetic differences translate into achievement, with institutional context explaining meaningful cross-national differences.

On intergenerational transmission, the project showed that parents' genes influence children's outcomes beyond direct biological inheritance through social and dynastic pathways extending across extended family networks and multiple generations—not primarily through within-household parenting. Triangulated designs confirmed that social-class origins have genuine independent effects on adult outcomes that survive genetic controls. The project also found that parental divorce reduces the degree to which children can realise their inherited potential, identifying family disruption as a context that suppresses genetic expression (Baier & Van Winkle, Journal of Marriage and Family; cf. supplementary figure).

A third set of findings brought genetic methods into family-demographic research. The project produced the first study to use genomic data to examine partnership dissolution, showing that genetic propensities—particularly for internalising symptoms and risk behavior—predict relationship break-up independently of social factors. Related work showed that parental separation shapes children's own later partnership dynamics. In contrast, a well-powered study found no evidence that older parental age at first birth harms children's development, narrowing the plausible mechanisms through which delayed family formation affects the next generation.

Dissemination took place through publications in leading international journals and through public debate in Norway. The project trained early-career researchers at the intersection of sociology, demography, and genetics.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has advanced the research frontier in several areas.

A first breakthrough concerns how to interpret the finding that parents' genes influence children's outcomes beyond DNA transmission. Prior work explained this as within-family nurturing. OPENFLUX showed it instead reflects social inequality extending across generations and extended family networks—reframing a central debate in both genetics and sociology.

A second breakthrough is the first study to use genomic data to study partnership dissolution. Prior research on divorce largely ignored genetic factors. OPENFLUX showed that genetic propensities predict partnership break-up, establishing that genetic selection cannot be ignored in explaining family instability.

A third contribution advances evidence on social origins. By combining studies of twins and adopted siblings, OPENFLUX separated the effects of social background from genetic confounding more convincingly than previous studies, confirming genuine causal effects of social origins on adult outcomes.

A fourth contribution shows that the genetic variants associated with educational attainment differ across generations: the genes that predicted education for parents are not the same as those that predict it for their children. This challenges a common assumption in the field and has implications for how social inheritance is studied.

Finally, a well-powered study found no evidence that older parental age at first birth harms children's development—an important result that narrows the set of plausible explanations for how changing family timing affects children.

Overall, OPENFLUX has shown that genetic methods can directly test social theories about inequality and context, rather than merely describing how much variation in outcomes is attributable to genes.

Conceptual figure from Baier & Van Winkle