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Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife

We assess the relative and joint contributions of genetic and environmental factors on health during childhood and assume that parental resources are part of the environmental factors shaping children's health. We discuss theoretical background and empirical evidence concerning the effects of p...

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Autores principales: Holzwarth, Bärbel, Wolf, Christof
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10333594/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37440777
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1136896
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author Holzwarth, Bärbel
Wolf, Christof
author_facet Holzwarth, Bärbel
Wolf, Christof
author_sort Holzwarth, Bärbel
collection PubMed
description We assess the relative and joint contributions of genetic and environmental factors on health during childhood and assume that parental resources are part of the environmental factors shaping children's health. We discuss theoretical background and empirical evidence concerning the effects of parental resources and heritability on children's health. Based on these findings we formulate six hypotheses guiding our empirical analysis, using data from TwinLife, a nationally representative sample of same sex twin pairs in Germany. We analyze self-rated health of 1,584 twin pairs aged 4–18. We did find strong support for the idea that parental resources influence children's health: household income and fathers' education consistently show positive effects. In contrast to our expectation, we did not find that genetic factors influence the health of well-off children less than the health of children living in families with lower SES. We also did not find that the genetic influence on health increases during childhood and adolescence. On the contrary our results indicate that the role played by genetic factors diminishes whereas environmental factors gain importance for health of children while growing up. This finding is good news for those interested in improving health chances of children from lower SES backgrounds because it demonstrates the malleability of children's health.
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spelling pubmed-103335942023-07-12 Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife Holzwarth, Bärbel Wolf, Christof Front Sociol Sociology We assess the relative and joint contributions of genetic and environmental factors on health during childhood and assume that parental resources are part of the environmental factors shaping children's health. We discuss theoretical background and empirical evidence concerning the effects of parental resources and heritability on children's health. Based on these findings we formulate six hypotheses guiding our empirical analysis, using data from TwinLife, a nationally representative sample of same sex twin pairs in Germany. We analyze self-rated health of 1,584 twin pairs aged 4–18. We did find strong support for the idea that parental resources influence children's health: household income and fathers' education consistently show positive effects. In contrast to our expectation, we did not find that genetic factors influence the health of well-off children less than the health of children living in families with lower SES. We also did not find that the genetic influence on health increases during childhood and adolescence. On the contrary our results indicate that the role played by genetic factors diminishes whereas environmental factors gain importance for health of children while growing up. This finding is good news for those interested in improving health chances of children from lower SES backgrounds because it demonstrates the malleability of children's health. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-06-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10333594/ /pubmed/37440777 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1136896 Text en Copyright © 2023 Holzwarth and Wolf. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Sociology
Holzwarth, Bärbel
Wolf, Christof
Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title_full Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title_fullStr Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title_full_unstemmed Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title_short Parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. An analysis of twins' self-rated health using TwinLife
title_sort parental resources and heritability as factors shaping children's health. an analysis of twins' self-rated health using twinlife
topic Sociology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10333594/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37440777
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1136896
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