Sven Oskarsson

Uppsala University | UU · Department of Government

Genome–wide association studies (GWAS) have discovered thousands of replicable genetic associations, guiding drug target discovery and powering genetic prediction of human phenotypes and diseases. However, genetic associations can be affected by gene–environment correlations and non–random mating, which can lead to biased inferences in downstream a...

Individual sensitivity to environmental exposures may be genetically influenced. This genotype-by-environment interplay implies differences in phenotypic variance across genotypes. However, environmental sensitivity genetic variants have proven challenging to detect. GWAS of monozygotic twin differences is a family-based variance analysis method, w...

We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on income among individuals of European descent and leveraged the results to investigate the socio-economic health gradient (N=668,288). We found 162 genomic loci associated with a common genetic factor underlying various income measures, all with small effect sizes. Our GWAS-derived polygenic ind...

We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on income among individuals of European descent and leveraged the results to investigate the socio-economic health gradient ( N =668,288). We found 162 genomic loci associated with a common genetic factor underlying various income measures, all with small effect sizes. Our GWAS-derived polygenic i...

Previous research has found that political traits have some degree of genetic basis, but researchers have had less success unpacking the relationship between genes and political behavior. We propose an approach for examining this relationship that can overcome many of the limitations of previous research: polygenic indices (PGIs). PGIs are DNA-base...

It is a well-established fact, from decades of research on political socialization, that the children of politically active parents are more likely to become politically active themselves. This poses a challenge for democracy, as it means that inequalities in political influence are reproduced across generations. The present study argues that this...

Estimates from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of unrelated individuals capture effects of inherited variation (direct effects), demography (population stratification, assortative mating) and relatives (indirect genetic effects). Family-based GWAS designs can control for demographic and indirect genetic effects, but large-scale family datase...

We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12–16% of EA variance and contributes to risk predi...

The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered effect of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. First...

A core part of political research is to identify how political preferences are shaped. The nature of these questions is such that robust causal identification is often difficult to achieve, and we are not seldom stuck with observational methods that we know have limited causal validity. The purpose of this paper is to measure the magnitude of bias...

Significance The strong correlation between education and voting is among the most robust findings in social science. We show that genes associated with the propensity to acquire education are also associated with higher voter turnout. A within-family analysis suggests education-linked genes exert direct effects on voter turnout but also reveals ev...

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...

If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by the same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the (aggregate) turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2–3%. Rich admini...

The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising, given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered impact of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. Firs...

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...

This study leverages population registry data from Sweden to examine whether immigrants who live in areas with a high concentration of ethnic minorities are more or less likely to be nominated for political office. It exploits a refugee placement program in place in Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s that restricted refugees' opportunitie...

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is co...

If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by the same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the (aggregate) turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2-3%. Rich admini...

If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2-3%. Rich administrative registr...

If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2-3%. Rich administrative registr...

Previous studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have different experiences depending on their birth order. First-borns spend their first years of life without having to compete over their parents' attentio...

If two elections are held at the same day, why do some people choose to vote in one but to abstain in another? We argue that selective abstention is driven by same factors that determine voter turnout. Our empirical analysis focuses on Sweden where the turnout gap between local and national elections has been about 2-3%. Rich administrative registr...

Why do some people feel a strong sense of civic duty to vote while others feel no obligation at all? One factor that has been identified as an important antecedent of the sense of civic duty is education. In The American Voter, Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes (1960) note that the sense of civic duty appears to “depend substantially on educatio...

Student mock elections are conducted in schools around the world in an effort to increase political interest and efficacy among students. There is, however, a lack of research on whether mock elections in schools enhance voter turnout in real elections. In this article, we examine whether the propensity to vote in Swedish elections is higher among...

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.

How does availability of education affect who becomes a political representative? Theorists have pointed out that access to education is a key to a well-functioning democracy, but few empirical studies have examined how changes in the access to education influence the chances of becoming a politician. In this paper, we analyze the effects of a larg...

It is well documented that voter turnout is lower among persons who grow up in families from a low socioeconomic status compared with persons from high-status families. This paper examines whether reforms in education can help reduce this gap. We establish causality by exploiting a pilot scheme preceding a large reform of Swedish upper secondary ed...

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...

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...

What motivates citizens to run for office? Recent work has shown that early life parental socialization is strongly associated with a desire to run for office. However, parents not only shape their children’s political environment, they also pass along their genes to those same children. A growing area of research has shown that individual differen...

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-...

In this study we provide new evidence on the much-discussed effect of education on political participation by utilizing the quasi-experiment of twinning. By looking at the relationship between education and participation within monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs we are able to circumvent traditional sources of confounding of the relationship rooted in gen...

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. We utilize a difference-in-difference strategy to analyze how a large school reform launched in Sweden in the 1950s, which l...

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...

One of the clearest results in previous studies on social trust is the robust positive relationship with educational attainment. The most common interpretation is that education has a causal effect on social trust. The theoretical argument and empirical results in this article suggest a different interpretation. We argue that common preadult factor...

Widespread and persistent political underrepresentation of immigrant-origin minorities poses deep challenges to democratic practice and norms. What accounts for this underrepresentation? Two types of competing explanations are prevalent in the literature: accounts that base minority underrepresentation on individual-level resources and accounts tha...

Inspired by recent studies on personality and political attitudes and behaviour we use the Big Five approach to assess the influence of a comprehensive set of personality traits on political tolerance. Our study is based on surveys in Bhopal in India and Lahore in Pakistan. We find that all Big Five traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversio...

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...

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...

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...

Almost 40 years ago, evidence from large studies of adult twins and their relatives suggested that between 30 and 60 % of the variance in social and political attitudes could be explained by genetic influences. However, these findings have not been widely accepted or incorporated into the dominant paradigms that explain the etiology of political id...

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...

This study of political tolerance in India reveals a positive correlation between such tolerance and membership in political parties and unions, and living in urban areas. Surprisingly, the study finds no difference in the levels of political tolerance between BJP and Congress (I) supporters, and no connection with education levels.

Recent studies have shown that trusting attitudes and behavior are biologically influenced. Focusing on the classic trust game, it has been demonstrated that oxytocin increases trust and that humans are endowed with genetic variation that influences their behavior in the game. Moreover, several studies have shown that a large share of the variation...

Diversity has powerful advantages, but may also generate internal tensions and low interpersonal trust. Despite extensive attention to these questions, the relationship between diversity and trust is often misunderstood and findings methodologically flawed. In this article, we specify two different mechanisms and adherent hypotheses. An individual...

Citizen support for political institutions is a key component of any representative democracy. Two main approaches to explain political support can be found in the relevant literature: (i) Socio-cultural theories assume that political support is politically exogenous and emphasize factors such as social trust when explaining political support. (ii)...

The purpose of this study is to re-examine the support for the 'oil hinders democracy' hypothesis. Following Michael Ross' seminal article 'Does oil hinder democracy?' (2001), the hypothesis has been supported by a number of cross-national empirical tests. We will proceed along two routes, one conceptual and one temporal/contextual. Using time-seri...

This is a study of political tolerance in India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Uganda. The project will focus on tolerance of the kind we associate with civil liberties and rights – liberties and rights that from a democratic perspective should belong to all citizens irrespective of race or ethnicity, gender, class, or, most important, opinion. We will cons...

This study tests three hypotheses on data from a survey on employment relations conducted in Sweden in 2006. The first hypothesis implies that the extent to which an employee perceives formal institutions as fair and duly enforced increases the probability that he/she will behave cooperatively. The second hypothesis states that an employee's trust...

This article focuses on how institutions matter in generating relationships of trust in an environment of unequal power. Trust is seen as the truster's expectation that the trustee will act trustworthily out of moral commitment and/or interest in continuing the relationship. Using cross-sectional data from a survey conducted in 2006 on Swedish empl...

The structure and determinants of trust are analyzed using questionnaire data from a sample of Japanese and Swedish university students. A salient characteristic of this analysis is that it considers various dimensions of trust. There are similarities and differences between the two countries in the relative magnitude of trust belonging to those di...

This article argues that centralized wage bargaining alters the causal logic in explanations of wage inequality, in the sense that common explanatory factors have different effects, given the degree of bargaining centralization. The evidence presented supports the theoretical argument. Using aggregate time-series cross-country data from fifteen cap...

In this article, the author shows how earlier institutional explanations of union strength are theoretically and methodologically flawed. At odds with earlier research, the author argues that two institutional properties—the degree of centralization in the bargaining system and the workplace access of the union movement— will interactively influenc...

Abstract will be provided by author.