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. 2015 Feb:127:171-80.
doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.001. Epub 2014 Aug 2.

What can genes tell us about the relationship between education and health?

Jason D Boardman  1 , Benjamin W Domingue  2 , Jonathan Daw  3
Affiliations

What can genes tell us about the relationship between education and health?

Jason D Boardman et al. Soc Sci Med. 2015 Feb.

Abstract

We use genome wide data from respondents of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to evaluate the possibility that common genetic influences are associated with education and three health outcomes: depression, self-rated health, and body mass index. We use a total of 1.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms obtained from the Illumina HumanOmni2.5-4v1 chip from 4233 non-Hispanic white respondents to characterize genetic similarities among unrelated persons in the HRS. We then used the Genome Wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) toolkit, to estimate univariate and bivariate heritability. We provide evidence that education (h(2) = 0.33), BMI (h(2) = 0.43), depression (h(2) = 0.19), and self-rated health (h(2) = 0.18) are all moderately heritable phenotypes. We also provide evidence that some of the correlation between depression and education as well as self-rated health and education is due to common genetic factors associated with one or both traits. We find no evidence that the correlation between education and BMI is influenced by common genetic factors.

Keywords: BMI; Depression; Education; Genetics; Health; Self-rated health.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
First two principal components in by self-reported race/ethnicity in the HRS
Figure 2
Figure 2
Simulation results with empirical results embedded.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Examples of four hypothetical causal relationships between Education (E), Health (H), and Genetics (G).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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