The challenge of genetics to social inequality research

In the social sciences the long-standing reluctance against genetically informative studies has diminished, and overcoming the traditional “biophobia”, interest has grown in the varieties of how and when genetic and social... [ view full abstract ]

In the social sciences the long-standing reluctance against genetically informative studies has diminished, and overcoming the traditional “biophobia”, interest has grown in the varieties of how and when genetic and social influences interfere to shape different life chances over the life course. Recognising the roles of genetic factors in producing social inequality is important for methodological and substantial reasons. Purely social investigations of family-of-origin influences obscure the statistical confounding that genetic transmission introduces. However, acknowledging the role genes does not at all mean to deny or even to relativize the role of social forces. Quite in contrast, the last years of genetically informed research made the paramount importance of social forces to understand genetic expression more evident. 

I discuss this along some promising questions for future research where social scientists could profit a lot from genetic information and vice versa geneticists for mechanisms of genetic expression.

1) The role of individual agency and exogeneity of environmental influences over the life course: ACE decompistion methods, including rGE, allow for a more comprehensive understanding of one of the core questions of social science research, namely the relation between structuration and agency. 

2) The interplay between genetic and social forces structuring the the puzzle of the intergeneral transmission of advantage and disadvantage: Against the too simple of notion of genese influencing social outcomes via psychological characteristics, the role of genetic and social forces, and the degree to which social forces are shared environment, varies a lot between different social transitions and individual development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, with changing patterns over individual lifetime.

For these two aspects first results based on the recently launched German TWINLIFE data are presented. However, for disentangling obvious contradictions between commonly modest to null shared environment estimates in bg research (except education) versus the strong sociological focus on the importance of parental resources and behaviors, there ist still alot to be done.

A third important aspect is a move from almost exclusive interest in proximal to more research on the role of distal environments: there is definitely a need for systematic international comparisons in bg research.