Ebeltoft Joakim Coleman, Eilertsen Espen Moen, Cheesman Rosa, Ayorech Ziada, Van Hootegem Arno, Lyngstad Torkild Hovde, Ystrom Eivind
PROMENTA Center, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Sociology & Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Nat Commun. 2025 May 14;16(1):4461. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58961-6.
Estimating the contributions of genetic and environmental factors is key to understanding differences in socioeconomic status (SES). However, the heritability of SES varies by measure, method, and context. Here, we estimate genetic and environmental sources of variance and commonality in the 'big four' SES indicators. We use high-quality administrative data on educational attainment, occupational prestige, income, and wealth, and employ four family-based and unrelated genotype-based heritability methods, all drawn from the same population-wide cohort of >170,000 Norwegians aged 35-45. By drawing subsamples from a consistent sample and using registry-based data, we reduce differences in estimates due to population characteristics and measurement error. Our results show that genetic variation consistently explains more for educational attainment and occupational prestige. Family-shared environmental contributions explained more for educational attainment and wealth. Our results highlight considerable common influences on the four SES indicators among genetic and shared environmental factors, but not among non-shared environmental factors. Overall, we show how the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors to SES differences in Norway varies by method and type of socioeconomic attainment. This study is a reliable source for comparing heritability methods, and for comparing SES indicators and their genetic and environmental commonality in a social-democratic welfare state.
估算遗传因素和环境因素的贡献是理解社会经济地位（SES）差异的关键。然而，SES的遗传度因测量方法、研究方法和背景而异。在此，我们估算了“四大”SES指标中方差和共性的遗传及环境来源。我们使用了关于教育程度、职业声望、收入和财富的高质量行政数据，并采用了四种基于家庭和基于无关个体基因型的遗传度方法，所有这些方法均来自同一组超过17万名年龄在35至45岁的挪威人的全人群队列。通过从一致的样本中抽取子样本并使用基于登记处的数据，我们减少了因人口特征和测量误差导致的估计差异。我们的结果表明，遗传变异对教育程度和职业声望的解释始终更多。家庭共享环境因素对教育程度和财富的解释更多。我们的结果凸显了遗传因素和共享环境因素对四个SES指标有相当大的共同影响，但在非共享环境因素中并非如此。总体而言，我们展示了在挪威，遗传因素和环境因素对SES差异的相对重要性如何因社会经济成就的方法和类型而异。这项研究是比较遗传度方法、比较社会民主福利国家中SES指标及其遗传和环境共性的可靠来源。
