Periodic Reporting for period 3 - OPENFLUX (Societal openness, normative flux, and the social modification of heritability)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-07-01 do 2023-12-31
The OPENFLUX project combines social science ideas with genetic data and methods to study how our social surroundings shape our opportunities and what choices we make. More specifically, the project uses genetic data and methods as measurement devices for assessing how social conditions shape opportunity structures and how human potential is either constrained or enabled. In short, how important are genetics, families and other environments in our lives.
Important areas of research in family demography and social stratification such as the degree of equality of opportunity in the age of mass education, changing family structures in the 20th century, the development of life courses and careers, and the transmission processes from parents to children all motivate an important role for human genetics. Relatively little of these efforts have directly engaged with human genetics. In the social sciences, a common criticism of genetic methods is that they are silent on context: Their results may only be valid for a specific society or a specific time and place. The project turns these criticisms into tools, by assessing how genetic effects vary across contexts and environments.
The project has three major objectives. The first objective is to understand whether societies have become more open over time, by examining social change across birth cohorts, as influential theory suggests heritable dispositions will increase in importance when opportunity structures expand or social norms are in flux. We will examine these ideas on the recent decades of family and fertility changes, and the expanding opportunity structures in education and labor markets.
The second objective is to examine the balance between genetic and environmental influences on outcomes related to social stratification and family demography outcomes. This way we can find out, for example, whether it is so that your social background "wears off" over time, or if it stays with you throughout your life. We will estimate changes over the life course as the effects of individual choice and structures accumulate.
The third objective is to examine the sources of similarity in parents and their children. Obviously, parents provide children with their DNA. But what else do they contribute, through their parenting and other choices they make on behalf of their children? Our objective is to better understand what factors contribute to the similarity of parents and offspring, above and beyond the genetic link.
Important areas of research in family demography and social stratification such as the degree of equality of opportunity in the age of mass education, changing family structures in the 20th century, the development of life courses and careers, and the transmission processes from parents to children all motivate an important role for human genetics. Relatively little of these efforts have directly engaged with human genetics. In the social sciences, a common criticism of genetic methods is that they are silent on context: Their results may only be valid for a specific society or a specific time and place. The project turns these criticisms into tools, by assessing how genetic effects vary across contexts and environments.
The project has three major objectives. The first objective is to understand whether societies have become more open over time, by examining social change across birth cohorts, as influential theory suggests heritable dispositions will increase in importance when opportunity structures expand or social norms are in flux. We will examine these ideas on the recent decades of family and fertility changes, and the expanding opportunity structures in education and labor markets.
The second objective is to examine the balance between genetic and environmental influences on outcomes related to social stratification and family demography outcomes. This way we can find out, for example, whether it is so that your social background "wears off" over time, or if it stays with you throughout your life. We will estimate changes over the life course as the effects of individual choice and structures accumulate.
The third objective is to examine the sources of similarity in parents and their children. Obviously, parents provide children with their DNA. But what else do they contribute, through their parenting and other choices they make on behalf of their children? Our objective is to better understand what factors contribute to the similarity of parents and offspring, above and beyond the genetic link.
From the start of the project until now, the project has worked towards all three objectives. Importantly, we have spent much effort and time obtaining permissions to use the scientific data that will be applied in the project, including large-scale administrative register data and genomic data. These data sources now are being analyzed to answer the project's research questions.
One important result from the project thus far is that the heritability of income, i.e. the effect of genetics and shared environments on how much money you make, changes over cohorts. It changes in ways that seem intrinsically linked to gender equality. This is a major, novel finding that augments and strengthens the arguments for including genetics in social science, and brings to light new perspectives on men’s and women’s possibilities for exploiting their talents and skills and how these have changed over time.
Another important result from the project thus far is that parental separation lowers the importance of genes for children’s school performance. The Scarr–Rowe hypothesis, which states that the relative importance of genes on cognitive ability and related outcomes is higher for advantaged compared to disadvantaged children. Our study expands upon the literature to include family structure as an indicator for advantage/disadvantage, and finds that the relative importance of genes on children’s cognitive ability and academic self-concept is lower for children in single-parent households compared to two-parent households.
We have estimated the role of family background, and in particular parents’ education, for offspring’s education using register data and a very powerful design. In this analysis, we find no evidence for the standard social science model of effects of parental education on offspring outcomes. Instead, the role of peers and other environmental factors seem important. Moverover, which genes that matter for education differ across generations. Genetic analyses that do not take this into account will potentially suffer from biases.
In addition, the project has preliminary results on a number of areas. These include (but are not limited to) estimates of genetic effects on likelihood of divorce, new heritability estimates for fertility outcomes, and how well polygenic scores predict outcomes across the life course.
One important result from the project thus far is that the heritability of income, i.e. the effect of genetics and shared environments on how much money you make, changes over cohorts. It changes in ways that seem intrinsically linked to gender equality. This is a major, novel finding that augments and strengthens the arguments for including genetics in social science, and brings to light new perspectives on men’s and women’s possibilities for exploiting their talents and skills and how these have changed over time.
Another important result from the project thus far is that parental separation lowers the importance of genes for children’s school performance. The Scarr–Rowe hypothesis, which states that the relative importance of genes on cognitive ability and related outcomes is higher for advantaged compared to disadvantaged children. Our study expands upon the literature to include family structure as an indicator for advantage/disadvantage, and finds that the relative importance of genes on children’s cognitive ability and academic self-concept is lower for children in single-parent households compared to two-parent households.
We have estimated the role of family background, and in particular parents’ education, for offspring’s education using register data and a very powerful design. In this analysis, we find no evidence for the standard social science model of effects of parental education on offspring outcomes. Instead, the role of peers and other environmental factors seem important. Moverover, which genes that matter for education differ across generations. Genetic analyses that do not take this into account will potentially suffer from biases.
In addition, the project has preliminary results on a number of areas. These include (but are not limited to) estimates of genetic effects on likelihood of divorce, new heritability estimates for fertility outcomes, and how well polygenic scores predict outcomes across the life course.
With the results obtained so far, the project has broken new scientific ground and is moving the research frontier beyond the state of the art in several areas. Our contributions to major sociological debates, for example on the effects of parental divorce or the role of genetics in social science research, move the research frontier. The project is expected to deliver further results beyond the state of the art also throughout the remaining, extended project period.