Genes, income and health: Unraveling the complex connections microbiologystudy

Past research studies have consistently found that there are disparities in the health outcomes of people from different socio-economic backgrounds. More recently, some findings hinted at the possibility that genetics also play a role in the widely documented relationship between health and income.

Researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Uppsala University, University of Edinburgh and other institutes worldwide recently carried out a study aimed at further exploring the connection between genetic variants and income. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, suggests that while the effects of genetics on income and health are small, they are significant and observed in populations from various European countries.

“There are many reasons to be interested in the relationship between our genome and our income, and how that relates to differences in health, and these reasons will vary between co-authors of this study,” Abdel Abdellaoui, W. David Hill and Philipp D. Koellinger, co-authors of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “There is much interest in the relationship between socio-economic status and health in many different fields of research.”

How much people earn is known to significantly impact their quality of life, broadening or limiting the services and opportunities available to them. For instance, in many countries, a larger income could allow individuals to send their children to private schools or enroll for higher education courses, as well as pay for specialist and private health care services.

“While previous research has established strong associations between income and various life outcomes, we wanted to explore the extent to which and how genetic factors relate to these associations,” said Abdellaoui, Hill and Koellinger.

“This will teach us about how our socio-economic system interacts with our biological make-up, will inform research on the relationship between biology and disease, and can help us better understand how social factors and health influence each other.”

The researchers analyzed genetic data collected from 668,288 individuals across 12 countries, primarily in Europe, which was stored in various large-scale biobanks or gathered as part of earlier cohort studies. The researchers estimated the associations between these individuals’ genetic variants and their income, also examining how both are linked to health outcomes.

“Using family data, we examined how much these genetic associations are influenced by the family environment, which can make genetic effects appear larger than they are,” explained Abdellaoui, Hill and Koellinger. “We already knew that genetic associations with income closely resemble those with educational attainment, so we used statistical techniques to separate the two and examine their distinct relationships with (mental) health outcomes.”

Overall, the analyses carried out by the researchers showed that environmental factors influence the difference in income observed among the populations they studied. In fact, while the team found that genetic factors explained approximately 1%–5% of variations in income, most of the predictive power of genetic variants appeared to arise from indirect effects, such as the background of parents and other environmental influences.

“Only about a quarter of the genetic influences on income seem to be from direct genetic effects, meaning that most of the observed genetic associations are shaped by social and environmental contexts,” said Abdellaoui, Hill and Koellinger.

“Second, we found evidence that some of the genetic effects that act on income in one country are different from the genetic effects that act on income in other countries. This suggests that social and economic structures influence how genetic predispositions manifest and that the traits and skills that contribute to income may differ between the countries studied.”

Interestingly, the researchers observed that the association between genetic variants and income also extended to education. Yet when they removed genetic effects that were shared between income and education, the remaining genetic factors (only linked to income) were found to be associated with better mental health outcomes and an engagement in risky behaviors, such as smoking or drinking.

“Plans for future research will vary between authors of this study, but an important direction for the field is to better map the relationships between genetics, socio-economic status, and health outcomes across different societies and over time,” said Abdellaoui, Hill and Koellinger. “We expect these relationships to vary depending on social structures, policies, and historical contexts.”

This recent work offers new, interesting insights about the intricate link between genetics and income, education, and health. In their next studies, the team would like to broaden their research, examining more diverse datasets that reach beyond European populations, as this could help to determine how the effects that they observed vary on a global scale.

“Further work is also needed to disentangle genetic effects from environmental influences and to explore the mechanisms through which socio-economic factors influence health disparities,” added the researchers.

“Additionally, income is just one aspect of the broader concept of socioeconomic status (SES). As such, it is important to understand how specific these genetic associations are to income or if they act across indices of SES. This is currently the focus of one project carried out by Hill and Koellinger.”

© 2025 Science X Network