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Genes influence socio-economic status (SES) in several inter-related ways, but they do so only through probabilistic pathways that operate within – and are often constrained by – social institutions, policies and chance events. Current research shows four main routes.
Genetic differences contribute to the psychological and health traits that help people attain education, occupations and income
• Large genome-wide studies find that the same sets of common variants that predict cognitive ability, self-control, or mental and physical health also predict years of schooling and household income [7].
• Twin and sibling designs put the broad-sense heritability of adult earnings at roughly 30–50 % in Scandinavia and the United States, with the remainder due to family and wider environmental factors [5], [6].
• Polygenic scores for education account for 10–15 % of the variation in completed schooling and typically 3–7 % of the variation in income; their effects on income are largely mediated by schooling and health [4], [7].
Parental genes influence children’s SES indirectly – “genetic nurture”
• Parents who carry variants associated with higher education tend to create more stimulating learning environments, even for the children who did not inherit those particular alleles. Up to one-third of the apparent genetic effect on a child’s education or income is therefore environmentally transmitted from the parents’ genes rather than inherited directly [2], [6].
Gene–environment correlation and interaction amplify early advantages or disadvantages
• Children with genetically influenced academic talent are more likely to be placed in advanced classrooms and to seek cognitively demanding peers, which in turn reinforces achievement (active and evocative gene–environment correlation) [1], [2].
• The benefit of favourable alleles is bigger in supportive settings. A PNAS study showed that the same education polygenic score raises attainment more in families with higher SES, indicating G × E interaction that can widen inequality if resources are unequal [8].
Social stratification feeds back onto the gene pool
• Because people tend to marry within their status group (educational and income homogamy), alleles associated with high SES concentrate in higher strata over generations, a process sometimes called “genetic assortative mating” [2].
• Clark’s surname studies concluded that social status persists across centuries at a rate consistent with a latent, moderately heritable trait he labels “general social competence,” although critics note that cultural transmission can produce similar patterns [3].
Key points and caveats
• Heritable ≠ immutable. The measured SNP heritability of household income in the UK Biobank is about 11 %; the remaining 89 % is non-genetic, and even the genetic share can be moderated by policy (e.g., free schooling, health care, anti-discrimination laws) [7].
• SES is “a social construct with heritable components” [2]. That is, the categories (education credentials, occupational titles, income brackets) are created by societies, but differential access to them partially tracks inherited traits.
• Estimates differ by country, cohort, gender and life stage. In egalitarian Norway, direct genetic effects on SES were smaller and indirect (family) effects larger than in less redistributive contexts, showing that institutions modulate genetic influences [6].
• Genetic findings describe average propensities, not destinies. Many individuals with disadvantageous polygenic profiles achieve high status, and many with favourable profiles do not.
In short, genes influence SES mainly through their effects on cognition, personality and health, through the environments that genetically advantaged parents create, and through the cumulative, socially contingent processes of stratification. They do not fix a person’s class position; rather, they bias probabilities that unfold within particular economic and policy landscapes.
Sources
[1] Rutherford, A. “Genes, money, status… and comics.” Punctuated Equilibrium. Discusses how genetic variation, via gene–environment correlation, relates to SES and cautions against genetic determinism. https://arutherford.substack.com/p/genes-money-status-and-comics
[2] Horsdal et al. “Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences.” Nature Human Behaviour (2025). Argues that SES categories are social but show measurable heritability and shape the genomic distribution through assortative mating. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02150-4
[3] Clark, G. The Son Also Rises (2014). Uses surname persistence to claim a moderately heritable “social competence” drives long-run status transmission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Son_Also_Rises_%28book%29
[4] Belsky et al. “What can genes tell us about the relationship between education and health?” Social Science & Medicine (2015). Shows education polygenic scores predict both schooling and later health, suggesting mediation pathways. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4314507/
[5] Bratsberg et al. “Heritability of lifetime earnings.” Journal of Economic Inequality (2019). Norwegian twin study estimates 30–50 % heritability of earnings, higher for permanent than transitory income. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10888-019-09413-x
[6] Zeng et al. “The genetic and environmental composition of socioeconomic status in Norway.” Nature Communications (2025). Separates direct genetic, indirect parental, and environmental components of SES in a whole-population twin sample. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58961-6
[7] Hill et al. “Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient.” Nature Human Behaviour (2024). UK Biobank GWAS finds ~11 % SNP heritability for income and links to cognitive and health traits. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02080-7
[8] Wong et al. “Education, genes, and social mobility.” PNAS (news release via EurekAlert!, 2023). Finds that the effect of education polygenic scores is stronger in higher-SES families, illustrating gene–environment interaction. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/463685