The genetic and environmental composition of socioeconomic status in Norway
How did your country report this? Share your view in the comments.
Quick Summary:
- The data is from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), a prospective population-based pregnancy cohort study conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Pregnant women from across Norway were recruited between 1999 and 2008, with 41% of all pregnant women participating. The cohort includes approximately 114,500 children, 95,000 mothers, and 75,000 fathers. MoBa has been linked with Norwegian registry data provided by Statistics Norway. The current study is based on registry data for MoBa parents (n = 170,202) We gathered measures of education, income, wealth, and occupation from Statistics Norway registry data linked to the Mo Ba parents. The data are of high quality and not subject to attrition. The flowchart in Fig. 6 details the data preparation process and shows the sample size used for each method and measure. The number of adults with quality-controlled genotype data used in this study is 128,310. More information on data production can be found here: http://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/sysselsetting.n/sensors/ssb-sensores/ssbsensores.shtml. The study was approved by The Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (project # 2017/2205). The project has undergone review by independent ethics advisors appointed by the European Research Council (Grant agreement No. 101045526).Genotype quality control control was conducted with 1000 Genomes phase 1 after LD-pruning. The educational attainment data was formatted in the International Standard Classification of Education 2011 and converted to the number of years required in Norway to achieve each level. To capture the education level at a specific life stage for all participants (parenthood), we used data on the highest educational attainment recorded between ages 35 and 45.
- We used four measures of income (individual, occupational, household and parental income) and conducted a multivariate GWAS to combine these different measures. The study was limited to 1KG-EUR-like individuals who were not enrolled in an educational programme at the time of survey or who were above the age of 30 if their current enrolment status was unknown. We applied a stringent quality-control protocol based on the EasyQC software package51 to the GWAS results from each cohort (see Supplementary Information Section 2.4 for more detail). To extract the common genetic factor from the fourGWAS results with different income measures, we again leveraged MTAG, allowing for different heritabilities among the input traits. Sex-specific meta-analysis results for each income measure were available as intermediary outputs from the meta-Analysis procedure. In addition, we conducted an Income Factor GWAS on the sex-specific results, which yielded an effective sample size of 360,197 for men and 353,429 for women. We obtained the household income GWAS for the USA (N eff = 30,855), the UK (N Eff = 387,579) and the Netherlands (Neff = 40,533) and occupational income GWas for Estonia (N. eff = 75,682), Norway (N = 42,204), the Netherlands and the UKN (Nff eff = 24,425) (Supplementary Table 4). We compared our Income FactorGWAS with the EA analysis with the UK GWAS. On the basis of the new coding of the qualifications of participants we conducted a GWAS of the UK in the UKB33 to reflect the educational qualifications of the participants. Here we used a version of summary statistics slightly different from publicly available publicly available ones. The latest version of the EA GWAS is slightly different to the ones publicly available from the UK.
- In a large sample of Norwegian 8-year-olds and their parents, children born to parents with more years of education tended to score slightly lower for depressive and ADHD traits. Although genetic estimates were imprecise, we were able to show that effects larger than 0.08 S.D. per year of parental education on these outcomes are unlikely. Our results suggest parental educational attainment is unlikely to substantially account for those effects, and that other parental characteristics may be more important for these outcomes. This contrasts with non-genetic studies from Spain6, Germany7 Finland8 and Norway9 which report robust associations between parental education and children’s mental health. The discrepancy may reflect heterogeneity in relationships by country context, differences in the methods used, or use in previous studies of more nationally representative study populations including more parents with fewer qualifications. It may indeed be that emotional and behavioural difficulties are influenced by parental income, and parental education has greater effects on children‘s emotional and behavioral difficulties than educational attainment. In contrast, approaches using PGIs can only consider genetic liability associated with specific SNPs. Confidence intervals of our MR estimates for ADHD are therefore consistent with small causal effects for parental education. We find similar relationships in a much larger group of genotyped trios. However, these effects were small, falling within our within-family MR estimates’ limits, and falling within confidence ranges of our results. We found clearer evidence of genetic nurture for depression and ADHD than for anxiety. But, maternal and paternal effects could not be separated, and the role of specific parental traits (for example, parental educational attainments) was not explored. The findings partly accord with a study which applied an extended children-of-twins design in MoBa to examine effects of parentalEducation on children’s depressive and ASD traits. But these results were small and were not fully explained by shared familial risk factors, suggesting genetic nurture of parents’ ADHD traits are more important.
Country-by-Country Breakdown:
Original Coverage
The data is from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), a prospective population-based pregnancy cohort study conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Pregnant women from across Norway were recruited between 1999 and 2008, with 41% of all pregnant women participating. The cohort includes approximately 114,500 children, 95,000 mothers, and 75,000 fathers. MoBa has been linked with Norwegian registry data provided by Statistics Norway. The current study is based on registry data for MoBa parents (n = 170,202) We gathered measures of education, income, wealth, and occupation from Statistics Norway registry data linked to the Mo Ba parents. The data are of high quality and not subject to attrition. The flowchart in Fig. 6 details the data preparation process and shows the sample size used for each method and measure. The number of adults with quality-controlled genotype data used in this study is 128,310. More information on data production can be found here: http://www.ssb.no/en/arbeid-og-lonn/sysselsetting.n/sensors/ssb-sensores/ssbsensores.shtml. The study was approved by The Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (project # 2017/2205). The project has undergone review by independent ethics advisors appointed by the European Research Council (Grant agreement No. 101045526).Genotype quality control control was conducted with 1000 Genomes phase 1 after LD-pruning. The educational attainment data was formatted in the International Standard Classification of Education 2011 and converted to the number of years required in Norway to achieve each level. To capture the education level at a specific life stage for all participants (parenthood), we used data on the highest educational attainment recorded between ages 35 and 45. Read full article
Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient
We used four measures of income (individual, occupational, household and parental income) and conducted a multivariate GWAS to combine these different measures. The study was limited to 1KG-EUR-like individuals who were not enrolled in an educational programme at the time of survey or who were above the age of 30 if their current enrolment status was unknown. We applied a stringent quality-control protocol based on the EasyQC software package51 to the GWAS results from each cohort (see Supplementary Information Section 2.4 for more detail). To extract the common genetic factor from the fourGWAS results with different income measures, we again leveraged MTAG, allowing for different heritabilities among the input traits. Sex-specific meta-analysis results for each income measure were available as intermediary outputs from the meta-Analysis procedure. In addition, we conducted an Income Factor GWAS on the sex-specific results, which yielded an effective sample size of 360,197 for men and 353,429 for women. We obtained the household income GWAS for the USA (N eff = 30,855), the UK (N Eff = 387,579) and the Netherlands (Neff = 40,533) and occupational income GWas for Estonia (N. eff = 75,682), Norway (N = 42,204), the Netherlands and the UKN (Nff eff = 24,425) (Supplementary Table 4). We compared our Income FactorGWAS with the EA analysis with the UK GWAS. On the basis of the new coding of the qualifications of participants we conducted a GWAS of the UK in the UKB33 to reflect the educational qualifications of the participants. Here we used a version of summary statistics slightly different from publicly available publicly available ones. The latest version of the EA GWAS is slightly different to the ones publicly available from the UK. Read full article
Parental education and children’s depression, anxiety, and ADHD traits, a within-family study in MoBa
In a large sample of Norwegian 8-year-olds and their parents, children born to parents with more years of education tended to score slightly lower for depressive and ADHD traits. Although genetic estimates were imprecise, we were able to show that effects larger than 0.08 S.D. per year of parental education on these outcomes are unlikely. Our results suggest parental educational attainment is unlikely to substantially account for those effects, and that other parental characteristics may be more important for these outcomes. This contrasts with non-genetic studies from Spain6, Germany7 Finland8 and Norway9 which report robust associations between parental education and children’s mental health. The discrepancy may reflect heterogeneity in relationships by country context, differences in the methods used, or use in previous studies of more nationally representative study populations including more parents with fewer qualifications. It may indeed be that emotional and behavioural difficulties are influenced by parental income, and parental education has greater effects on children‘s emotional and behavioral difficulties than educational attainment. In contrast, approaches using PGIs can only consider genetic liability associated with specific SNPs. Confidence intervals of our MR estimates for ADHD are therefore consistent with small causal effects for parental education. We find similar relationships in a much larger group of genotyped trios. However, these effects were small, falling within our within-family MR estimates’ limits, and falling within confidence ranges of our results. We found clearer evidence of genetic nurture for depression and ADHD than for anxiety. But, maternal and paternal effects could not be separated, and the role of specific parental traits (for example, parental educational attainments) was not explored. The findings partly accord with a study which applied an extended children-of-twins design in MoBa to examine effects of parentalEducation on children’s depressive and ASD traits. But these results were small and were not fully explained by shared familial risk factors, suggesting genetic nurture of parents’ ADHD traits are more important. Read full article
Global Perspectives Summary:
Global media portray this story through varied cultural, economic, and political filters. While some focus on geopolitical ramifications, others highlight local impacts and human stories. Some nations frame the story around diplomatic tensions and international relations, while others examine domestic implications, public sentiment, or humanitarian concerns. This diversity of coverage reflects how national perspectives, media freedom, and journalistic priorities influence what the public learns about global events.
How did your country report this? Share your view in the comments.
Sources:
- Original Article
- Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient
- Parental education and children’s depression, anxiety, and ADHD traits, a within-family study in MoBa
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58961-6