Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 115, Issue 42, Pages E9765-E9772Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1802909115
Keywords
education; health; gene-by-environment; obesity; genetics
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Funding
- National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health [K01AG050811, RF1AG055654, 3P30AG024962-13S1]
- National Institute of Mental Health [1R01MH107649-03]
- National Institute on Aging [R01-AG042568]
- Ragnar Soderbergs stiftelse (Ragnar Soderberg Foundation) [E42/15]
- Open Philanthropy Project [2016-152872]
- Pershing Square Fund for Research on the Foundations of Human Behavior
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This work investigates whether genetic makeup moderates the effects of education on health. Low statistical power and endogenous measures of environment have been obstacles to the credible estimation of such gene-by-environment interactions. We overcome these obstacles by combining a natural experiment that generated variation in secondary education with polygenic scores for a quarter-million individuals. The additional schooling affected body size, lung function, and blood pressure in middle age. The improvements in body size and lung function were larger for individuals with high genetic predisposition to obesity. As a result, education reduced the gap in unhealthy body size between those in the top and bottom terciles of genetic risk of obesity from 20 to 6 percentage points.
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