Healthcare Policy Shifts Genetic Selection

Using a regression‑discontinuity around the July 1948 launch of the UK National Health Service and polygenic indexes from UK Biobank, researchers find reduced stillbirths and infant mortality and a post‑NHS cohort shift toward higher genetic risk for some adverse traits and lower genetic propensity for traits like educational attainment. The effects are concentrated in disadvantaged areas, robust across family designs, and replicate in multiple longitudinal UK datasets. — If validated, this reframes large public‑health interventions as drivers not only of immediate mortality but of long‑run population composition, with implications for inequality, public‑health evaluation, and how we interpret cohort differences in genetics‑linked outcomes.