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This paper investigates how genetic endowments influence lifetime earnings using a dynamic lifecycle model and longitudinal data from a cohort tracked from birth to retirement. We examine both genetic impacts on skill formation and on choices of parental investments, education, and occupation. A one standard deviation increase in the polygenic score (PGS) for educational attainment raises lifetime earnings by over 20%. Of this, only 3.4% is due to the role of genes in directly impacting skills. The majority is due to genes directly impacting choices or genes increasing skills which in turn increase parental investments, education and occupational attainment, and lifetime earnings. Additionally, PGSs for mental health and risk tolerance affect earnings and career decisions.
Bio:
Eric French is the Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations and Labour Economics at the University of Cambridge, Co-director, ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy, Institute for Fiscal Studies, and is a Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Centre for Economic Policy Research.
French's research interests include: household behavior over the lifecycle; the impact of government and private pensions on savings and labor supply; the impact of health insurance on medical spending, savings, and labor supply; the impact of disability insurance programs on labor supply; the impact of the minimum wage on employment and spending of minimum wage households; and dynamic structural modelling.
French's research has been published in Econometrica, the Review of Economic Studies, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Handbook of Labor Economics, Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, Annual Review of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Labor Economics, International Economic Review, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Human Resources, Economic Journal, Fiscal Studies, American Economic Journal: Policy, Lancet, and other publications.
Previously he was a Professor of Economics at University College London, and prior to that, senior economist and research advisor on the microeconomics team in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has also had visiting positions teaching at the Department of Economics and the Business School at Northwestern University, and has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Cowles (Yale), and the Social Security Administration.
French received a B.A. in economics from the University of California–Berkeley, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Find out more about Eric French.