Understanding the Educational Attainment Polygenic Index and its Interactions with SES in Determining Health in Young Adulthood

Abstract

We investigate the formation of health capital and the role played by genetic endowments, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and education. We find that the Educational Attainment Polygenic Index demonstrates stronger effects on health and health behaviors for subjects with high parental SES. We also show that a strong association between education and health survives controlling not only for detailed traditional controls and cognitive-noncognitive skills, but also for a large set of polygenic indexes that proxy health, skills, and environment, all of which are major expected confounders. This result is suggestive of a causal effect of education on health.