Main takeaways:
1) ECEC is the most effective strategy to reduce social disparities, positively affecting low-SES children
2) Exclusive parental care and family day-care may increase social disparities, benefiting high-SES children while negatively affecting low-SES

4/5

Contributing to research on health inequalities and sociogenomics, I find:


1) PGI BMI is more predictive of high levels of BMI among individuals from *low-SES families*
2) This pattern is weakened over the life course but *persists* among individuals with high BMI levels

4/5

Deeply grateful to my supervisor @fabriberna.bsky.social who put so much into this thesis and was far more than just an academic mentor

And to the best committee @juhoharkonen.bsky.social @melindacmills.bsky.social & @nicolabarban.bsky.social for improving this thesis and supporting this work!

The visualization below aims to summarize the theoretical mechanisms elaborated and tested in the thesis:

→ The family socioeconomic environment can compensate, boost, and trigger children’s genetic associations.

I recently defended my PhD thesis on education & health inequalities!

To help prevent misuse of sociogenomic findings, here is a graphic version of my thesis conclusion:

→ Family socioeconomic environment interacts with genetic propensities, reproducing social inequalities in education and health.

We find no evidence of the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis and some suggestion of the compensatory advantage hypothesis.

Using NTR data, we test two competing hypotheses: the Scarr-Rowe (Scarr-Salapatek, 1971) from behavioral genetics and the compensatory advantage hypothesis (Bernardi, 2014) from social stratification literature

Those who are suffering more in terms of educational attainment from parental separation are high-SES children with a low genetic propensity for education. High-SES kids with non-separated parents achieve college completion and more education despite a low genetic propensity

4/5

We find that

1) ECEC is the most effective strategy to reduce social disparities, positively affecting low-SES children

2) Exclusive parental care and family day-care tend to increase social disparities, benefiting high-SES children while negatively affecting low-SES

5/5

The beauty and magic of interdisciplinary research

The within-family coefficients are in line with the between-family, at least partially. They almost all are negative (suggesting compensation and not scarr-rowe), although often not significant. For instance, you can see here the coefficients plotted by design (when we use the cognitive PGI).

On the other hand, supporting the compensatory hypothesis, 36/42 PGIxSES interactions are negative, although only three are significant after multiple-testing corrections (p-value < 0.007)  (7/8)

First post here:

Yesterday, we had an amazing workshop at UNED. Among others, there were brilliant presentations by @pengzell.bsky.social, Fabian Pfeffer, @sarageven.bsky.social, Marco Cozzani, and Leire Salazar.

Here is just a sweet memory of the post-workshop ✨ Madrid never lets you down!