Reconciliation: Modelling GxE Across the Lifecourse
It is now recognized among many scholars that most socio-behavioral outcomes evince both strong genetic and environmental components that contribute to their variation in natural populations. The next step in reconciling nature and nurture, then, is to properly model gene-environment interplay. In this talk, I will discuss a series of attempts to apply econometric methods for causal inference--namely, a natural experiment framework--to genome-wide data available in social surveys to model gene-by-environment interaction effects. Examples in this vein include deploying the Vietnam draft lottery, twin differences in birth weight, cohort change, and sibling differences in genotype (polygenic scores) to questions of health, development and socioeconomic attainment across the life course. In addition to trying to properly operationalize E, I will discuss alternatives to conceptualizing and measuring genetic regulation of plasticity that may inform GxE models.