Parental income and psychiatric disorders from age 10 to 40: a genetically informative population study
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Background
Lower parental income is associated with more psychiatric disorders among offspring, but it is unclear if this association reflects effects of parental income (social causation) or shared risk factors (social selection). Prior research finds contradictory results, which may be due to age differences between the studied offspring.
Methods
Here, we studied the entire Norwegian population aged 10 to 40 between 2006 and 2018 (N = 2,468,503). By linking tax registries to administrative health registries, we describe prevalence rates by age, sex, and parental income rank. Next, we used kinship-based models with extended families of twins and siblings to distinguish direct effects of parents from shared genetic and environmental risk factors.
Results
We show that lower parental income rank was associated with more psychiatric disorders at all ages from age 10 to 40 ( r between −.06 and −.15). The kinship-based models indicated that direct effects of parental income played a large role (38%) in explaining the parent-offspring correlation among adolescents, while shared risk factors accounted for the entire parent-offspring correlation among adults.
Conclusion
Our findings indicate that social causation plays a significant role during adolescence, while social selection fully explains the parent-offspring association in adulthood.
