IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v76y2021i1p173-183..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Genes Related to Education Predict Frailty Among Older Adults in the United States
[Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies]

Author

Listed:
  • Brooke M Huibregtse
  • Breanne L Newell-Stamper
  • Benjamin W Domingue
  • Jason D Boardman
  • Anna Zajacova

Abstract

ObjectiveThis article expands on research that links education and frailty among older adults by considering the role of genes associated with education.MethodData come from a sample of 7,064 non-Hispanic, white adults participating in the 2004–2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. Frailty was measured with two indices: (a) The Frailty Index which corresponds to a deficit accumulation model; and (b) The Paulson–Lichtenberg Frailty Index which corresponds to the biological syndrome/phenotype model. Genes associated with education were quantified using an additive polygenic score. Associations between the polygenic score and frailty indices were tested using a series of multilevel models, controlling for multiple observations for participants across waves.ResultsResults showed a strong and negative association between genes for education and frailty symptoms in later life. This association exists above and beyond years of completed education and we demonstrate that this association becomes weaker as older adults approach their 80s.DiscussionThe results contribute to the education–health literature by highlighting new and important pathways through which education might be linked to successful aging.

Suggested Citation

  • Brooke M Huibregtse & Breanne L Newell-Stamper & Benjamin W Domingue & Jason D Boardman & Anna Zajacova, 2021. "Genes Related to Education Predict Frailty Among Older Adults in the United States [Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies]," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 76(1), pages 173-183.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:1:p:173-183.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbz092
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aysu Okbay & Jonathan P. Beauchamp & Mark Alan Fontana & James J. Lee & Tune H. Pers & Cornelius A. Rietveld & Patrick Turley & Guo-Bo Chen & Valur Emilsson & S. Fleur W. Meddens & Sven Oskarsson & Jo, 2016. "Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment," Nature, Nature, vol. 533(7604), pages 539-542, May.
    2. Daniel W. Belsky & Benjamin W. Domingue & Robbee Wedow & Louise Arseneault & Jason D. Boardman & Avshalom Caspi & Dalton Conley & Jason M. Fletcher & Jeremy Freese & Pamela Herd & Terrie E. Moffitt & , 2018. "Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115(31), pages 7275-7284, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mitchell, Brittany L. & Hansell, Narelle K. & McAloney, Kerrie & Martin, Nicholas G. & Wright, Margaret J. & Renteria, Miguel E. & Grasby, Katrina L., 2022. "Polygenic influences associated with adolescent cognitive skills," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    2. Fletcher, Jason, 2023. "Decoupling genetics from attainments: The role of social environments," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    3. Cawley, John & Han, Euna & Kim, Jiyoon & Norton, Edward C., 2023. "Genetic nurture in educational attainment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    4. Dilnoza Muslimova & Hans van Kippersluis & Cornelius A. Rietveld & Stephanie von Hinke & S. Fleur W. Meddens, 2020. "Nature-nurture interplay in educational attainment," Papers 2012.05021, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    5. Mathias Seviiri & Matthew H. Law & Jue-Sheng Ong & Puya Gharahkhani & Pierre Fontanillas & Catherine M. Olsen & David C. Whiteman & Stuart MacGregor, 2022. "A multi-phenotype analysis reveals 19 susceptibility loci for basal cell carcinoma and 15 for squamous cell carcinoma," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, December.
    6. Nicola Barban & Elisabetta De Cao & Marco Francesconi, 2021. "Gene-Environment Effects on Female Fertility," CESifo Working Paper Series 9337, CESifo.
    7. Xiaoran Liang & Eleanor Sanderson & Frank Windmeijer, 2022. "Selecting Valid Instrumental Variables in Linear Models with Multiple Exposure Variables: Adaptive Lasso and the Median-of-Medians Estimator," Papers 2208.05278, arXiv.org.
    8. Nicholas W Papageorge & Kevin Thom, 2020. "Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1351-1399.
    9. Pietro Biroli & Titus Galama & Stephanie von Hinke & Hans van Kippersluis & Kevin Thom, 2022. "Economics and Econometrics of Gene-Environment Interplay," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 22/759, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    10. Ronald de Vlaming & Aysu Okbay & Cornelius A Rietveld & Magnus Johannesson & Patrik K E Magnusson & André G Uitterlinden & Frank J A van Rooij & Albert Hofman & Patrick J F Groenen & A Roy Thurik & Ph, 2017. "Meta-GWAS Accuracy and Power (MetaGAP) Calculator Shows that Hiding Heritability Is Partially Due to Imperfect Genetic Correlations across Studies," PLOS Genetics, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(1), pages 1-23, January.
    11. Karhula, Aleksi & Erola, Jani & Raab, Marcel & Fasang, Anette Eva, 2019. "Destination as a process: Sibling similarity in early socioeconomic trajectories," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 40, pages 85-98.
    12. Das, Aniruddha, 2021. "The relational genomics of cognitive function: A longitudinal study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
    13. Marks, Gary N. & O'Connell, Michael, 2021. "No evidence for cumulating socioeconomic advantage. Ability explains increasing SES effects with age on children's domain test scores," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    14. Melanie Goisauf & Kaya Akyüz & Gillian M. Martin, 2020. "Moving back to the future of big data-driven research: reflecting on the social in genomics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    15. Barban, Nicola & De Cao, Elisabetta & Oreffice, Sonia & Quintana-Domeque, Climent, 2021. "The effect of education on spousal education: A genetic approach," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. von Hinke, Stephanie & Sørensen, Emil N., 2023. "The long-term effects of early-life pollution exposure: Evidence from the London smog," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    17. Viinikainen, Jutta & Bryson, Alex & Böckerman, Petri & Kari, Jaana T. & Lehtimäki, Terho & Raitakari, Olli & Viikari, Jorma & Pehkonen, Jaakko, 2022. "Does better education mitigate risky health behavior? A mendelian randomization study," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    18. Kandauda A S Wickrama & Catherine Walker OˋNeal & Tae Kyoung Lee & Seonhwa Lee, 2021. "Early life course processes leading to educational and economic attainment in young adulthood: Contributions of early socioeconomic adversity and education polygenic score," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-18, October.
    19. Bhatnagar, Sahir R. & Lu, Tianyuan & Lovato, Amanda & Olds, David L. & Kobor, Michael S. & Meaney, Michael J. & O'Donnell, Kieran & Yang, Archer Y. & Greenwood, Celia M.T., 2023. "A sparse additive model for high-dimensional interactions with an exposure variable," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    20. Shelly Lundberg & Aloysius Siow, 2017. "Canadian contributions to family economics," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1304-1323, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:76:y:2021:i:1:p:173-183.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.