title: Molecular genetics and subjective well-being.
abstract: Subjective well-being (SWB) is a major topic of research across the social sciences. Twin and family studies have found that genetic factors may account for as much as 30-40% of the variance in SWB. Here, we study genetic contributions to SWB in a pooled sample of ≈ 11,500 unrelated, comprehensively-genotyped Swedish and Dutch individuals. We apply a recently developed method to estimate "common narrow heritability": the fraction of variance in SWB that can be explained by the cumulative additive effects of genetic polymorphisms that are common in the population. Our estimates are 5-10% for single-question survey measures of SWB, and 12-18% after correction for measurement error in the SWB measures. Our results suggest guarded optimism about the prospects of using genetic data in SWB research because, although the common narrow heritability is not large, the polymorphisms that contribute to it could feasibly be discovered with a sufficiently large sample of individuals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Economics, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Cornelius A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Rietveld
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cesarini
authors.forename: Daniel J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Benjamin
authors.forename: Philipp D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Koellinger
authors.forename: Jan-Emmanuel
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: De Neve
authors.forename: Henning
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tiemeier
authors.forename: Magnus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johannesson
authors.forename: Patrik K E
authors.initials: PK
authors.lastname: Magnusson
authors.forename: Nancy L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Pedersen
authors.forename: Robert F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Krueger
authors.forename: Meike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bartels
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005787:Gene Frequency; D005838:Genotype; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009426:Netherlands; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic / Q000235:genetics*; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics*
keywords: GCTA; GREML; happiness