Genetic Overlap Complicates Education–Health Causality

Common genetic variation partly links educational attainment and some health outcomes (notably depression and self‑rated health), meaning associations observed in social‑epidemiology can be driven by shared biology as well as social causation. Studies estimating education's health effects should account for genetic covariance (e.g., via family designs, measured polygenic scores, or genomic‑relationship methods) before inferring policy‑relevant causal effects. — If genetic overlap explains nontrivial parts of education–health correlations, policy prescriptions that treat education as a direct health intervention could overstate expected benefits and misallocate public resources.