Genetics and occupational well-being: A lifespan perspective

Occupation represents an indispensable area of life for most individuals and is regarded as a crucial component of socioeconomic status (SES). There are a variety of occupational characteristics (OCs) that can be used to describe a job, with some as indicators of occupational attainment (e.g., managerial position, occupational prestige) and the rest as non-attainment (e.g., job demand, tasks, and knowledge). Explaining why people hold jobs with different occupational characteristics is a question of both academic importance and practical significance. For example, individuals may change their jobs during their careers. Such career transitions at different life stages may have different health implications. A major perspective in social sciences assumes that some key characteristics of the job, including holding a leadership position or prestigious job, are mostly determined by environmental factors, such as the family background, thus overlooking the possible role of personal traits, including one’s genetic makeup. However, twin studies have demonstrated that occupational characteristics are heritable, with heritability estimations at approximately 30% for job demand, autonomy, complexity, and leadership position. There also have been some efforts to use the candidate gene approach to identify specific genes that may be related to overall occupational ranking or one’s holding of leadership positions. In the whole-genome era, contemporary social genomic research has made significant progress in deepening our understanding of genetic mechanisms that are relevant to educational attainment and income. Nevertheless, the whole genomic research on occupation is relatively scarce, resulting in a limited understanding of the biological underpinning of the whole spectrum of SES.