Income Polygenic Index Informs Health Gap

A robust polygenic index for income—derived from a 668,288‑person GWAS that found 162 loci—can be used to partition observed socio‑economic health gradients into parts correlated with common genetic variation and parts more likely driven by environment or policy. The index explains a modest but non‑negligible share (1–5%) of variance in income, which has downstream implications for interpreting education–health correlations and for designing targeted, evidence‑aware interventions. — If genetics accounts for a measurable slice of income variance, policymakers and researchers must incorporate genetic confounding checks into evaluations of socio‑economic interventions and be cautious about simplistic causal claims that ignore biology‑environment interplay.