The Polygenic Risk Score of Subjective Well-Being, Self-Employment, and Earnings Among Older Individuals

We investigate whether the polygenic risk score (PRS) of subjective well-being (SWB), a weighted combination of multiple genetic variants which captures an individual’s time-invariant genetic predisposition to SWB, influences the choice of self-employment and whether it explains differences in earnings between older self-employed and employed workers. In a sample of 4,571 individuals (50 to 65 years old) representing 14,937 individual-year observations from the Health and Retirement Study, we find that the PRS of SWB is positively associated with self-employment and earnings. However, contrary to our expectations, the positive association with earnings is not significantly different between self-employed and employed individuals.

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