Education and BMI: a Genetic Informed Analysis

Nowadays obesity is one of the key health risk factor. The negative association between obesity and education is widely known and, although the mechanisms underlying this relationship are far less clear, it is often interpreted as a causal one. In this work we aim to investigate the relationship between education and Body Mass Index (BMI) applying behavioral genetics models to data coming from the Italian Twin Registry (more precisely, a subsample of 619 pairs of Mz and 335 pairs of same sex Dz twins). Variance decomposition models reveal that for both education and BMI heritability should not be overlooked. Above all, Cholesky decomposition model shows that around 30 % of the covariance between BMI and Title Page with all Author Contact Details education is due to common genetic factors. This result may suggest to rethink the relationship between education and BMI.