David Cesarini

New York University | NYU · Department of Economics

Identifying genetic determinants of reproductive success may highlight mechanisms underlying fertility and identify alleles under present-day selection. Using data in 785,604 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 43 genomic loci associated with either number of children ever born (NEB) or childlessness. These loci span diverse aspects of...

Effects estimated by genome-wide association studies (GWASs) include effects of alleles in an individual on that individual (direct genetic effects), indirect genetic effects (for example, effects of alleles in parents on offspring through the environment) and bias from confounding. Within-family genetic variation is random, enabling unbiased estim...

Polygenic indexes (PGIs) are DNA-based predictors. Their value for research in many scientific disciplines is growing rapidly. As a resource for researchers, we used a consistent methodology to construct PGIs for 47 phenotypes in 11 datasets. To maximize the PGIs’ prediction accuracies, we constructed them using genome-wide association studies—some...

(Abstracted from N Engl J Med 2021;385:78–86) Embryo selection based on polygenic scores (ESPS) is the principle wherein one can select individualized embryos to transfer as part of in vitro fertilization based on predictions of health and other outcomes derived from genome-wide association studies (GWASs). The majority of human traits including ph...

Companies have recently begun to sell a new service to patients considering in vitro fertilization: embryo selection based on polygenic scores (ESPS). These scores represent individualized predictions of health and other outcomes derived from genomewide association studies in adults to partially predict these outcomes. This article includes a discu...

We conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of relative intake from the macronutrients fat, protein, carbohydrates, and sugar in over 235,000 individuals of European ancestries. We identified 21 unique, approximately independent lead SNPs. Fourteen lead SNPs are uniquely associated with one macronutrient at genome-wide significance (P < 5 ×...

Polygenic indexes (PGIs) are DNA-based predictors. Their value for research in many scientific disciplines is rapidly growing. As a resource for researchers, we used a consistent methodology to construct PGIs for 47 phenotypes in 11 datasets. To maximize the PGIs' prediction accuracies, we constructed them using genome-wide association studies - so...

We present a new method, Multi-Ancestry Meta-Analysis (MAMA), which combines genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics from multiple populations to produce new summary statistics for each population, identifying novel loci that would not have been discovered in either set of GWAS summary statistics alone. In simulations, MAMA increase...

Associations between genotype and phenotype derive from four sources: direct genetic effects, indirect genetic effects from relatives, population stratification, and correlations with other variants affecting the phenotype through assortative mating. Genome wide association studies (GWAS) of unrelated individuals have limited ability to distinguish...

We exploit the randomized assignment of lottery prizes in a large administrative Swedish data set to estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation. A $150,000 windfall gain increases stock market participation probability by 12 percentage points among prelottery nonparticipants but has no discernible effect on prelottery stock...

Importance Poor health and unhealthy lifestyles are substantially more prevalent among individuals with low income than among individuals with high income, but the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Objective To evaluate whether changes to unearned wealth from lotteries are associated with long-term health behaviors and overall health....

We surveyed a large sample of Swedish lottery players about their psychological well-being 5–22 years after a major lottery event and analysed the data following pre-registered procedures. Relative to matched controls, large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence...

In the version of the paper initially published, no competing interests were declared. The ‘Competing interests’ statement should have stated that B.M.N. is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Deep Genomics. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associ...

Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associ...

Preference for mates with similar phenotypes; that is, assortative mating, is widely observed in humans1–5 and has evolutionary consequences6–8. Under Fisher's classical theory⁶, assortative mating is predicted to induce a signature in the genome at trait-associated loci that can be detected and quantified. Here, we develop and apply a method to qu...

We conducted genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of relative caloric intake from fat, protein, carbohydrates and sugar in over 235,000 individuals. We identified 21 approximately independent lead SNPs. Relative protein intake exhibits the strongest relationships with poor health, including positive genetic associations with obesity,...

Here we conducted a large-scale genetic association analysis of educational attainment in a sample of approximately 1.1 million individuals and identify 1,271 independent genome-wide-significant SNPs. For the SNPs taken together, we found evidence of heterogeneous effects across environments. The SNPs implicate genes involved in brain-development p...

Non-random mate-choice with respect to complex traits is widely observed in humans, but whether this reflects true phenotypic assortment, environment (social homogamy) or convergence after choosing a partner is not known. Understanding the causes of mate choice is important, because assortative mating (AM) if based upon heritable traits, has geneti...

We introduce multi-trait analysis of GWAS (MTAG), a method for joint analysis of summary statistics from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of different traits, possibly from overlapping samples. We apply MTAG to summary statistics for depressive symptoms (N eff = 354,862), neuroticism (N = 168,105), and subjective well-being (N = 388,538). As...

We study the effect of wealth on labor supply using the randomized assignment of monetary prizes in a large sample of Swedish lottery players. Winning a lottery prize modestly reduces earnings, with the reduction being immediate, persistent, and quite similar by age, education, and sex. A calibrated dynamic model implies lifetime marginal propensit...

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance for claims of new discoveries from 0.05 to 0.005.

"We propose to change the default P-value threshold forstatistical significance for claims of new discoveries from 0.05 to 0.005."

Obesity is a worldwide epidemic, with major health and economic costs. Here we estimate heritability for body mass index (BMI) in 172,000 sibling pairs and 150,832 unrelated individuals and explore the contribution of genotype–covariate interaction effects at common SNP loci. We find evidence for genotype–age interaction (likelihood ratio test (LRT...

We introduce Multi-Trait Analysis of GWAS (MTAG), a method for joint analysis of summary statistics from GWASs of different traits, possibly from overlapping samples. We apply MTAG to summary statistics for depressive symptoms ( N eff = 354,862), neuroticism ( N = 168,105), and subjective well-being ( N = 388,538). Compared to 32, 9, and 13 genome-...

We examine the psychometric and empirical properties of some commonly used survey-based measures of risk preferences in a population-based sample of 11,000 twins. Using a model that provides a general framework for making inferences about the component of measured risk attitudes that is not due to measurement error, we show that measurement-error a...

Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10(...

The genetic architecture of human reproductive behavior—age at first birth (AFB) and number of children ever born (NEB)—has a strong relationship with fitness, human development, infertility and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, very few genetic loci have been identified, and the underlying mechanisms of AFB and NEB are poorly understood...

Intellectual disabilities and associated neurodevelopmental disorders may result from rare genetic mutations. Ganna et al. show that these also help explain variability in educational attainment, a proxy for cognitive function.

In the version of this article initially published, one of the affiliations listed for author Maciej Trzaskowski, to the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Split, Split, Croatia, was included in error. The correct affiliation for this author is the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensla...

Approximately half of the variation in wellbeing measures overlaps with variation in personality traits. Studies of non-human primate pedigrees and human twins suggest that this is due to common genetic influences. We tested whether personality polygenic scores for the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) domains and for item response theory (IRT) d...

Educational attainment is strongly influenced by social and other environmental factors, but genetic factors are estimated to account for at least 20% of the variation across individuals1. Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for educational attainment that extends our earlier discovery sample1, 2 of 101,069 individu...

Very few genetic variants have been associated with depression and neuroticism, likely because of limitations on sample size in previous studies. Subjective well-being, a phenotype that is genetically correlated with both of these traits, has not yet been studied with genome-wide data. We conducted genome-wide association studies of three phenotype...

We use administrative data on Swedish lottery players to estimate the causal impact of substantial wealth shocks on players’ own health and their children’s health and developmental outcomes. Our estimation sample is large, virtually free of attrition, and allows us to control for the factors conditional on which the prizes were randomly assigned....

Despite clear links between genes and smoking, effective public policy requires far richer measurement of the feedback between biological, behavioral, and environmental factors. The Kavli HUMAN Project (KHP) plans to exploit the plummeting costs of data gathering and to make creative use of new technologies to construct a longitudinal panel data se...

We tested whether polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder would predict creativity. Higher scores were associated with artistic society membership or creative profession in both Icelandic (P = 5.2 × 10−6 and 3.8 × 10−6 for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder scores, respectively) and replication cohorts (P = 0.0021 and 0.00086)....

Parental education is the strongest measured predictor of offspring education, and thus many scholars see the parent–child correlation in educational attainment as an important measure of social mobility. But if social changes or policy interventions are going to have dynastic effects, we need to know what accounts for this intergenerational associ...

We conduct a detailed examination of the psychometric and empirical properties of some commonly used survey-based measures of risk preferences in a population-based sample of 11,000 twins. Using a model that provides a general framework for making inferences about the component of measured risk attitudes that is not due to measurement error, we sho...

Tobacco smoking is a risk factor for numerous disorders, including cancers affecting organs outside the respiratory tract. Epidemiological data suggest that smoking is a greater risk factor for these cancers in males compared with females. This observation, together with the fact that males have a higher incidence of and mortality from most non–sex...

A recent genome-wide-association study of educational attainment identified three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) whose associations, despite their small effect sizes (each R(2) ≈ 0.02%), reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 × 10(-8)) in a large discovery sample and were replicated in an independent sample (p < .05). The study also report...

Significance We identify several common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage approach: we conduct a genome-wide association study of educational attainment to generate a set of candidates, and then we estimate the association of these variants with cognitive performance. In older Americans, we find that these var...

Recent research has demonstrated that genetic differences explain a sizeable fraction of the variance in political orientations, but little is known about the pathways through which genes might affect political preferences. In this article, we use a uniquely assembled dataset of almost 1,000 Swedish male twin pairs containing detailed information o...

Genome-wide association study results have yielded evidence for the association of common genetic variants with crude measures of completed educational attainment in adults. Whilst informative, these results do not inform as to the mechanism of these effects or their presence at earlier ages and where educational performance is more routinely and m...

Recent research demonstrates that a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these studies have not yet identified the mechanisms that generate such a relationship. Some scholars have speculated that psychological traits mediate the relationship between genes and political par...

This article analyzes a rich Swedish data set with information on the electoral turnout of a large sample of adoptees, their siblings, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. We use a simple regression framework to decompose the parent-child resemblance in voting into pre-birth factors, measured by biological parents’ voting, and post...

Twins-based estimates of the return to schooling have featured prominently in the economics of education literature. Their unbiasedness hinges critically on the assumption that within-pair variation in schooling is explained by factors unrelated to wage earning ability. This paper develops a framework for testing this assumption and shows, in a lar...

Neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) genes (CHRNA5/CHRNA3/CHRNB4) have been reproducibly associated with nicotine dependence, smoking behaviors, and lung cancer risk. Of the few reports that have focused on early smoking behaviors, association results have been mixed. This meta-analysis examines early smoking phenotypes and SNPs in the...

A genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment was conducted in a discovery sample of 101,069 individuals and a replication sample of 25,490. Three independent single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are genome-wide significant (rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266), and all three replicate. Estimated effects sizes are small (coefficie...

This FAQ document accompanying the Science paper seeks to explain to journalists, other scientists, and the public, in accessible language, what the study did—and did not—find. It was highlighted as a best practice by the editors of Nature (see Editorial, Dangerous Work: Behavioural Geneticists Must Tread Carefully To Prevent Their Research Being M...

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a major topic of research across the social sciences. Twin and family studies have found that genetic factors may account for as much as 30-40% of the variance in SWB. Here, we study genetic contributions to SWB in a pooled sample of ≈11,500 unrelated, comprehensively-genotyped Swedish and Dutch individuals. We apply...

Economic variables such as income, education, and occupation are known to affect mortality and morbidity, such as cardiovascular disease, and have also been shown to be partly heritable. However, very little is known about which genes influence economic variables, although these genes may have both a direct and an indirect effect on health. We repo...

Study design, sample size, sample quality control, and self-employment measure within each study. (DOC)

Genomic inflation factors. (DOC)