ArticleBehavior genetics2022
Human Capital Mediates Natural Selection in Contemporary Humans.
Article in Behavior genetics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Natural selection on reproductive timing varies by education in twentieth-century Estonia.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Natural Selection Across Three Generations of Americans.Behavior genetics · 2024Article
- Reflections on assortative mating, social stratification, and genetics.Journal of genetics · 2024Article
- Considerations, Caveats, and Suggestions for the Use of Polygenic Scores for Social and Behavioral Traits.Behavior genetics · 2024Review
- Assessment of the Genetic Characteristics of a Generation Born during a Long-Term Socioeconomic Crisis.Genes · 2023Article
- Article
- Stability and change in male fertility patterns by cognitive ability across 32 birth cohorts.Biology letters · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Natural selection has been documented in contemporary humans, but little is known about the mechanisms behind it. We test for natural selection through the association between 33 polygenic scores and fertility, across two generations, using data from UK Biobank (N = 409,629 British subjects with European ancestry). Consistently over time, polygenic scores that predict higher earnings, education and health also predict lower fertility. Selection effects are concentrated among lower SES groups, younger parents, people with more lifetime sexual partners, and people not living with a partner. The direction of natural selection is reversed among older parents, or after controlling for age at first live birth. These patterns are in line with the economic theory of fertility, in which earnings-increasing human capital may either increase or decrease fertility via income and substitution effects in the labour market. Studying natural selection can help us understand the genetic architecture of health outcomes: we find evidence in modern day Great Britain for multiple natural selection pressures that vary between subgroups in the direction and strength of their effects, that are strongly related to the socio-economic system, and that may contribute to health inequalities across income groups.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.