Genetics and Intergenerational Transmission

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In the framework of the SPS Departmental Seminar Series, this session features a lecture by Professor Melinda C. Mills.

Professor Mills first provides a brief overview of the current science of sociogenomics, and then focuses on recent work on occupational status, health and fertility. She delves into genetic and social intergenerational and family models. She then explores the relationship between the complex outcomes of occupation, education and fertility and shows how non-cognitive measures such as scholastic motivation, occupational aspiration, personality and behavioural disinhibition can drive associations between genetics with status and fertility outcomes. She concludes by reflecting on the challenges of polygenic scores, pleiotropy, causality and the use of non-representative samples. 

Speaker bio

Melinda Mills is the Nuffield Professor of Demography and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, University of Oxford and Nuffield College and Professor of Data Science and Public Health Policy at the Department of Economics, Econometrics & Finance and Department of Genetics, Groningen. She is a Special Advisor to the European Commissioner of the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni. She has published 7 books and over 120 articles across multiple disciplines.