5/ The common definition of heritability is fairly simple - the amount of variation in a population due to genetics I.e. how much your genes determine your traits, like intelligence
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6/ So, for example, if I say that intelligence is 90% heritable, people would generally take this to mean that 90% of a person's intelligence is determined by their genespic.twitter.com/i7WPGkTYFm
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7/ Unfortunately, THIS IS WRONG It turns out, your individual phenotype (trait) is much more complex than this interpretation of heritability might suggest
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8/ What this actually means is that, in the population THAT YOU HAVE MEASURED, that proportion of variation in traits is genetic
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9/ If we discover that IQ is 90% heritable, what it means is that, on average, across a population who are exposed to the same environment, 90% of IQ variance will be due to genes
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10/ But we know that other things affect IQ Education, for example. Social factors. Wealth All things being equal, in a group of 100 people, 90% of the difference between their IQs will be genetics. BUT THINGS ARE NEVER EQUAL
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11/ A geneticist called Richard Lewontin gave a classic example of how this works 2 populations of plants. One grown with adequate light/nutrients, one without Within EACH GROUP heritability of height is ~100% But one group is smaller than the other. Because of environmentpic.twitter.com/JK4aeCPKdj
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12/ Getting back to the Daily Mail story, we can apply the same theory Maybe there are genes that are associated with wealth. It seems far-fetched, but who knows? Environment will still be the biggest predictor of whether you are rich or not
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13/ Research has long established that wealth is largely inherited. Not genetically, but through the simple mechanic of parents having lots of money, dying, and giving it to their kidspic.twitter.com/CLam7y6O39
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14/ Moreover, it's been well established in genetics that you can't necessarily separate genes from environment Someone who is born with "rich" genes, but who lives in poverty as a child, may be negatively affected in a whole host of ways
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15/ Ultimately, it's foolish to worry about genetics. These correlation studies are absurd, but even if they weren't, wealth is more about environment than genes
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16/ The best way to improve wealth outcomes (broadly) is redistributive taxation, so if we really care about it we should increase tax and fund services
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