Polygenic prediction of occupational status GWAS elucidates genetic and environmental interplay in intergenerational transmission, careers and health in UK Biobank.

Socioeconomic status (SES) impacts health and life-course outcomes. This genome-wide association study (GWAS) of sociologically informed occupational status measures (ISEI, SIOPS, CAMSIS) using the UK Biobank (N = 273,157) identified 106 independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms of which 8 are novel to the study of SES. Genetic correlations with educational attainment (r = 0.

Genetics of female and male reproductive traits and their relationship with health, longevity and consequences for offspring.

Substantial shifts in reproductive behaviors have recently taken place in many high-income countries including earlier age at menarche, advanced age at childbearing, rising childlessness and a lower number of children. As reproduction shifts to later ages, genetic factors may become increasingly important. Although monogenic genetic effects are known, the genetics underlying human reproductive traits are complex, with both causal effects and statistical bias often confounded by socioeconomic factors.

The importance of family-based sampling for biobanks.

Biobanks aim to improve our understanding of health and disease by collecting and analysing diverse biological and phenotypic information in large samples. So far, biobanks have largely pursued a population-based sampling strategy, where the individual is the unit of sampling, and familial relatedness occurs sporadically and by chance. This strategy has been remarkably efficient and successful, leading to thousands of scientific discoveries across multiple research domains, and plans for the next wave of biobanks are underway.

Evidence from Finland and Sweden on the relationship between early-life diseases and lifetime childlessness in men and women.

The percentage of people without children over their lifetime is approximately 25% in men and 20% in women. Individual diseases have been linked to childlessness, mostly in women, yet we lack a comprehensive picture of the effect of early-life diseases on lifetime childlessness. We examined all individuals born in 1956-1968 (men) and 1956-1973 (women) in Finland (n = 1,035,928) and Sweden (n = 1,509,092) to the completion of their reproductive lifespan in 2018.

Prepayment meters strongly associated with multiple types of deprivation and emergency respiratory hospital admissions: an observational, cross-sectional study.

Background: Prepayment meters (PPMs) require energy to be paid in advance. Action groups and media contend that PPMs are concentrated in the most vulnerable groups, prone to run out of credit and experience financial burden. This led to forced installation for those over age 85 being banned in April 2023 and a 'prepayment premium' scrapped in July 2023.

Within-sibship genome-wide association analyses decrease bias in estimates of direct genetic effects.

Estimates from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of unrelated individuals capture effects of inherited variation (direct effects), demography (population stratification, assortative mating) and relatives (indirect genetic effects). Family-based GWAS designs can control for demographic and indirect genetic effects, but large-scale family datasets have been lacking. We combined data from 178,086 siblings from 19 cohorts to generate population (between-family) and within-sibship (within-family) GWAS estimates for 25 phenotypes.

Gender differences in sleep disruption during COVID-19: cross-sectional analyses from two UK nationally representative surveys.

Objective: COVID-19 related measures have impacted sleep on a global level. We examine changes in sleep problems and duration focusing on gender differentials.

Design: Cross-sectional analyses using two nationally representative surveys collected during the first and second month after the 2020 lockdown in the UK.

How Young Mothers Rely on Kin Networks and Formal Childcare to Avoid Becoming NEET in the Netherlands.

Motherhood is often cited as one of the main reasons for young women to become NEET (not in employment, education, or training). Given the potential long-term negative implications of NEET status, it is important to understand which types of resources can help young mothers to avoid becoming NEET around childbirth. In this paper we investigate how the chances of young mothers to become and stay NEET around the time of first birth are related to the availability and characteristics of members of their social support network, especially partners and grandparents, to assist in childcare.

The effect of mandatory COVID-19 certificates on vaccine uptake: synthetic-control modelling of six countries.

Background: Mandatory COVID-19 certification (showing vaccination, recent negative test, or proof of recovery) has been introduced in some countries. We aimed to investigate the effect of certification on vaccine uptake.

Methods: We designed a synthetic control model comparing six countries (Denmark, Israel, Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland) that introduced certification (April-August, 2021), with 19 control countries.

at 75 years: An empirical review.

advances research on fertility, mortality, family, migration, methods, policy, and beyond, yet it lacks a recent, rigorous review. We examine all papers published between 1947 and 2020 ( = 1,901) and their authors, using natural language processing, social network analysis, and mixed methods that combine unsupervised machine learning with qualitative coding. After providing a brief history, we map the evolution in authorship and papers towards shorter, multi-authored papers, also finding that females comprise 33.

Quantifying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through life-expectancy losses: a population-level study of 29 countries.

Background: Variations in the age patterns and magnitudes of excess deaths, as well as differences in population sizes and age structures, make cross-national comparisons of the cumulative mortality impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic challenging. Life expectancy is a widely used indicator that provides a clear and cross-nationally comparable picture of the population-level impacts of the pandemic on mortality.

Methods: Life tables by sex were calculated for 29 countries, including most European countries, Chile and the USA, for 2015-2020.

Identification of 371 genetic variants for age at first sex and birth linked to externalising behaviour.

Age at first sexual intercourse and age at first birth have implications for health and evolutionary fitness. In this genome-wide association study (age at first sexual intercourse, N = 387,338; age at first birth, N = 542,901), we identify 371 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, 11 sex-specific, with a 5-6% polygenic score prediction. Heritability of age at first birth shifted from 9% [CI = 4-14%] for women born in 1940 to 22% [CI = 19-25%] for those born in 1965.

Lack of Trust, Conspiracy Beliefs, and Social Media Use Predict COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy.

As COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out across the world, there are growing concerns about the roles that trust, belief in conspiracy theories, and spread of misinformation through social media play in impacting vaccine hesitancy. We use a nationally representative survey of 1476 adults in the UK between 12 and 18 December 2020, along with 5 focus groups conducted during the same period. Trust is a core predictor, with distrust in vaccines in general and mistrust in government raising vaccine hesitancy.

Reconstructing Sociogenomics Research: Dismantling Biological Race and Genetic Essentialism Narratives.

We detail the implications of sociogenomics for social determinants research. We focus on education and race because of how early twentieth-century scientific eugenic thinking facilitated a range of racist and eugenic policies, most of which helped justify and pattern racial and educational morbidity and mortality disparities that remain today, and are central to sociological research. Consequently, we detail the implications of sociogenomics research by unpacking key controversies and opportunities in sociogenomics as they pertain to the understanding of racial and educational inequalities.

Gene-environment dependencies lead to collider bias in models with polygenic scores.

The application of polygenic scores has transformed our ability to investigate whether and how genetic and environmental factors jointly contribute to the variation of complex traits. Modelling the complex interplay between genes and environment, however, raises serious methodological challenges. Here we illustrate the largely unrecognised impact of gene-environment dependencies on the identification of the effects of genes and their variation across environments.

Estimating the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality, life expectancy and lifespan inequality in England and Wales: a population-level analysis.

Background: Deaths directly linked to COVID-19 infection may be misclassified, and the pandemic may have indirectly affected other causes of death. To overcome these measurement challenges, we estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality, life expectancy and lifespan inequality from week 10 of 2020, when the first COVID-19 death was registered, to week 47 ending 20 November 2020 in England and Wales through an analysis of excess mortality.

Methods: We estimated age and sex-specific excess mortality risk and deaths above a baseline adjusted for seasonality with a systematic comparison of four different models using data from the Office for National Statistics.