MPRG Biosocial | Biology, Social Disparities, and Development

Human development unfolds in transactions between biology, such as genetics, and social environments. The Max Planck Research Group Biosocial examines how genetic influences and social inequality in childhood combine to shape differential outcomes of education and health across the lifespan.
 

Children raised in families that are socially disadvantaged have an increased risk of experiencing early life adversity, such as deprivation and threat. Biosocial research provides an important avenue of inquiry for understanding how the social environment intersects with biological processes to shape differential outcomes of education, health, and well-being across the lifespan. Gene-environment interplay can be seen as the primary mechanism by which social inequality affects child and adolescent development, reproducing inequality over generations.

 

The Max Planck Research Group Biosocial – Biology, Social Disparities, and Development is motivated by four broad questions:

1. Does the epigenome serve as a cellular memory system of early life environmental influences that are relevant for later life health and education?
2. What are the behavioral cascades through which genetic differences between children affect life course outcomes?
3. How does parenting affect child health and educational performance, controlling for genetic inheritance?
4. How does social inequality impose constraints on the expression of genetic differences between people?

We leverage recent genomic innovations, including polygenic and epigenetic methods, in longitudinal population cohorts and randomized trials to advance our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of social inequality. The goal of this research is to reduce the effects of social inequality on child and adolescent well-being by identifying environmental factors that promote more equitable outcomes. Our research commenced in August 2022 and is financially supported by the Max Planck Society, an R01 award by the National Insitutes of Health, the EU Horizon European Social Science Genetics Network, and the Jacobs Foundation.