The goal of this project is to understand the extent to which individual’s childhood and teenage family and socioeconomic circumstances are related to externalising behaviour (e.g., smoking, alcohol, early sexual debut) which have the potential to create inequalities in the transition to adulthood (remaining in education, timing of fertility and early occupational outcomes) and how these effects are moderated by one’s genetic predispositions to these outcomes. This project will consider the impact of the parental and family environment during childhood, including family structure (e.g., single parent) and socioeconomic circumstances. Using data from multiple sources, including AddHealth, MoBa, and Lifelines, the project will examine the potential long-term effects of family structure and socioeconomic circumstance during early childhood and adolescence on fertility, education and occupational outcomes. It will use recent GWAS results from age at first sex and birth, educational attainment and occupational prestige.
Using LD score regression, we will examine sex-specific correlations between these highly correlated traits, apply GenomicSEM to uncover the etiology of correlations and understand the role of parental environment on externalising teenage behaviour and early adult outcomes. We also check for bias due to conditioning on a collider in cases of active gene-environment correlation to cope with endogenous selection bias when one or more covariates depends on unmeasured factors that also affect the outcome. The project explores how an individual’s genetic predisposition interacts with family structure, socioeconomic environments and externalising behaviour to generate inequalities in the early transition to adulthood.
This project is hosted at University of Oxford.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 programme under grant agreement number 101073237
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