Testing for Peer Effects Using Genetic Data

Cawley, John; Han, Euna; Kim, Jiyoon; Norton, Edward C.

doi:10.3386/w23719

Cited by 15 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…Social-genetic effects, also called "indirect" genetic effects, refer to the influence of one organism's genotype on a different organism's phenotype (14,15). Social-genetic effects, which may take several forms (1), are accounted for in evolutionary theory (42,43) and have been observed among animals (15,(44)(45)(46)(47) and received some study in human siblings (14,48,49).…”

Section: Is the Social Genome Associated With An Individual's Phenotype?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

Domingue¹,

Belsky

Fletcher

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Humans tend to form social relationships with others who resemble them. Whether this sorting of like with like arises from historical patterns of migration, meso-level social structures in modern society, or individual-level selection of similar peers remains unsettled. Recent research has evaluated the possibility that unobserved genotypes may play an important role in the creation of homophilous relationships. We extend this work by using data from 9,500 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine genetic similarities among pairs of friends. While there is some evidence that friends have correlated genotypes, both at the whole-genome level as well as at trait-associated loci (via polygenic scores), further analysis suggests that meso-level forces, such as school assignment, are a principal source of genetic similarity between friends. We also observe apparent social-genetic effects in which polygenic scores of an individual’s friends and schoolmates predict the individual’s own educational attainment. In contrast, an individual’s height is unassociated with the height genetics of peers.SignificanceOur study reported significant findings of a “social genome” that can be quantified and studied to understand human health and behavior. In a national sample of more than 9,000 American adolescents, we found evidence of social forces that act to make friends and schoolmates more genetically similar to one another as compared to random pairs of unrelated individuals. This subtle genetic similarity was observed across the entire genome and at sets of genomic locations linked with specific traits—educational attainment and body-mass index—a phenomenon we term “social-genetic correlation.” We also find evidence of a “social-genetic effect” such that the genetics of a person’s friends and schoolmates influenced their own education, even after accounting for the person’s own genetics.

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Section: Is the Social Genome Associated With An Individual's Phenotype?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

Domingue¹,

Belsky

Fletcher

et al. 2017

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…3 Some interesting recent studies aim to address this challenge. Cutler and Glaeser (2010) exploit smoking bans at the workplace to study spousal smoking behavior; Fletcher and Marksteiner (2017) analyze spouses' behavior in clinical interventions to reduce individuals' smoking and alcohol consumption; and Cawley et al (2017) study eects across siblings in weight and obesity by instrumenting for a sibling's obesity using genetic risk scores. 1 multiplier: the eects cascade to siblings, stepchildren, sons and daughters in-law, and even close coworkers, who exhibit responses of the same order of magnitude as spouses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Health Behaviors

Fadlon

Nielsen

2017

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and the 2016 NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments and discussions. Jonathan Leganza provided excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Economic Policy Research Network (EPRN). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

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“…The idea of social genetic effects originated in evolutionary theory (Moore, Brodie, and Wolf 1997;Wolf et al 1998), and social genetic effects have been observed in animal populations (Petfield et al 2005;Bergsma et al 2008;Canario, Lundeheim, and Bijma 2017;Baud et al 2018). Social science is now beginning to study such effects in human populations; examples include among social peers (Sotoudeh, Conley, and Harris 2017;Domingue et al 2018), sibling pairs (Cawley et al 2017;Kong et al 2018), and parents and their children (Bates et al 2018;Kong et al 2018;Wertz et al 2018). The existence of within-family social genetic effects complicates attempts to derive causal estimates from GWAS.…”

Section: B the Problem Of Confoundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

Trejo

Domingue

2019

Preprint

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statistics from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) can be used to generate a polygenic score (PGS). For complex, behavioral traits, the correlation between individual PGS and phenotype may contain bias alongside the causal effect of the individual's genes (due to geographic, ancestral, and/or socioeconomic confounding). We formalize the recent introduction of a different source of bias in regression models using PGSs: the effects of parental genes on offspring outcomes (i.e. genetic nurture). GWAS do not discriminate between the various pathways through which genes influence outcomes, meaning existing PGSs capture both direct genetic effects and genetic nurture effects. We construct a structural model for genetic effects and show that, unlike other sources of bias in PGSs, the presence of genetic nurture biases PGS coefficients from both naïve OLS (between-family) and family fixed effects (within-family) regressions. This bias is in opposite directions; while naïve OLS estimates are biased upwards, family fixed effects estimates are biased downwards. We quantify this bias for a given trait using two novel parameters that we identify and discuss: (1) the genetic correlation between the direct and nurture effects and (2) the ratio of the SNP heritabilities for the direct and nurture effects.

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Testing for Peer Effects Using Genetic Data

Cited by 15 publications

References 36 publications

The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

The Social Genome of Friends and Schoolmates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health

Family Health Behaviors

Genetic Nature or Genetic Nurture? Quantifying Bias in Analyses Using Polygenic Scores

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