Education can reduce health differences related to genetic risk of obesity

Abstract

This work investigates whether genetic makeup moderates the effects of education on health. Low statistical power and endogenous measures of environment have been obstacles to the credible estimation of such gene-by-environment interactions. We overcome these obstacles by combining a natural experiment that generated variation in secondary education with polygenic scores for a quarter-million individuals. The additional schooling affected body size, lung function, and blood pressure in middle age. The improvements in body size and lung function were larger for individuals with high genetic predisposition to obesity. As a result, education reduced the gap in unhealthy body size between those in the top and bottom terciles of genetic risk of obesity from 20 to 6 percentage points.