Gene-Environment Interaction in the Intergenerational Transmission of Asthma

Researchers have found strong linkages between parent and child health, but the mechanisms underlying intergenerational health transmission are not well understood. This paper investigates how the importance of genetic health transmission mechanisms varies by environmental conditions in the case of pediatric asthma, the single most common chronic health condition among American children. Using a sample that includes approximately 2000 adoptees and a large number of similar biological families, I find that the relative importance of genetic transmission differs strongly by socioeconomic status (SES). In high SES families, parent-child asthma associations are approximately 75% weaker among adoptees than biological children, suggesting a dominant role for genetic transmission. In lower SES families, parent-child asthma associations are virtually identical across biological and adoptive children, suggesting a negligible role for genetic transmission. A potential interpretation of this difference is that as environmental conditions affecting asthma improve among higher SES children, an increasingly large share of asthma variation is due to genetics. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.