The Rise of Genetic Samples for Demographic Research: Concerns over Healthy Volunteer Effect, Socio-Demographic, and Mortality Selections

Evelina Akimova , University of Oxford

The rapid growth of genotyping and biomarkers has provided a wealth of new opportunities to social science and demography. The possibility of the inclusion of genetic risks as an additional variable for discoveries of demographic cohort variations is promising, but it also gives rise to substantial methodological considerations. One of the important considerations is the notion of sample selection, including mortality selection in genetic samples. In order to deliver on the potential for genetic samples to comprehensively grasp the multidimensional nature of any phenomena, it is essential to understand the nature of sample selection based on various socio-demographic and health factors and whether it leads to mortality selection. The importance of sample selection in social genomics has been addressed regarding ethnic diversity issues, mortality selection, and socio-economic and health disparities. I would like to contribute to this discussion by conducting the analysis on the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and its genetic subsample. My results suggest that genotyped participants in the UKHLS are a selective population. I find small-to-moderate differences between genotyped and non-genotyped participants: on average, the former tend to have higher educational attainment, live in urban areas, and have better general self-reported health. Findings also suggest that these differences are likely to be germane to a gene-by-cohort interaction studies because genotyped and non-genotyped participants have distinctive mortality trends resulting in mortality selection in the UKHLS genetic sample.

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 Presented in Session 38. Methodological innovations in the study of mortality