| Title: | Changing Patterns of Assortative Mating for Educational, Substance Use, and Anthropometric Traits |
| Journal: | Behavior Genetics |
| Published: | 27 Sep 2026 |
| Pubmed: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42801432/ |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-026-10285-x |
| URL: | https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10519-026-10285-x.pdf |
Publication 21741
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Abstract
Assortative mating (AM) shapes population structure and genetic architecture, yet its temporal dynamics remain incompletely understood. Using UK Biobank (UKB) spouse pairs (N = 82,398), full siblings (N = 16,273), and large unrelated samples from the UKB (N = 333,491) and All of Us Research Program (N = 228,875), we examined phenotypic and genetic assortment for eight behavioral, anthropometric, and socioeconomic traits. Spousal phenotypic correlations were substantial, particularly for educational attainment (rspouse = 0.45), drinks per week (rspouse = 0.42), smoking cessation (rspouse = 0.33), and BMI (rspouse = 0.26), and revealed two broad cross-trait clusters reflecting lifestyle and health/socioeconomic profiles. Spousal polygenic score (PGS) correlations were smaller but robust, with the largest effects for educational attainment (rspousePGS = 0.16), height (rspousePGS = 0.08), and smoking initiation (rspousePGS = 0.06). Sibling PGS correlations exceeded the expected 0.50 for all traits except age at smoking initiation and cigarettes per day, indicating genetic assortment in the parental generation. Even-odd chromosome PGS correlations (θ), measuring within-person cross-chromosome covariance induced by assortative mating, showed consistent genome-wide signatures of AM across cohorts, with θ = 0.07 for educational attainment, θ = 0.04 for height and smoking initiation, and smaller cross-trait θ values that mirrored phenotypic clustering. Birth-year analyses revealed cohort-specific changes: in the UKB, θ increased only for smoking cessation (γ = 0.01), whereas in All of Us we observed increasing θ across birth years for smoking cessation (γ = 0.014), smoking initiation (γ = 0.017), and educational attainment (γ = 0.02). Educational attainment θ remained stable (~ 0.07) across 1930-1970 UKB cohorts but rose from 0.04 in the 1930s to 0.09 by 2000 in All of Us. These findings indicate that genetic AM is pervasive, trait-specific, and, especially for education and some smoking behaviors, increasing across recent U.S. birth cohorts, with implications for how social and genetic variation becomes structured across generations.</p>
1 Author
- Gretchen R. B. Saunders
1 Application
| Application ID | Title |
|---|---|
| 16651 | Genetic architecture of disease and related anthropometric phenotypes |
Enabling scientific discoveries that improve human health