13th Annual IGSS Conference • September 30-October 1, 2022

Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences 2022

Revisiting the relationship between educational attainment and the family life course: a sociogenomic approach

Luyin Zhang, Office of Population Research, Princeton University

While the phenotypic association between education and the family life course has been well-studied, little is known about how genetic endowment factors into the relationship. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, I investigate (1) the extent to which the genetic propensity for education, measured by the education polygenic score (PGS), is related to the differentiation, type, and timing of the family trajectory, as well as (2) potential gender and cohort variations in the associations. I employ inverse probability weighting to mitigate mortality selection and perform sequence and cluster analyses to create three family trajectory outcomes: family trajectory complexity, family trajectory cluster, and age at first family transition. Linear regression, multinomial logistic regression, and Cox proportional hazards regression are then fitted. The analyses yield important findings. First, the genetic predictor of education is negatively associated with family trajectory complexity and the hazard of transition into first marriage or parenthood on the one hand, and positively related to the probability of having delayed or decoupled family sequences as opposed to early family formation on the other. This stands even after controlling for years of schooling and parental education. Second, despite striking gender differences in the educational effects on the family life course, the genetic associations reported above are similar between men and women. Third, there is little evidence for a statistically meaningful cohort variation in the relationship between education PGS and the three family trajectory outcomes. The results reveal the importance of incorporating genes into social science studies.