Gene x Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores and the Impact of an Early Childhood Intervention in Colombia

The genetic material used in this paper was collected as part of the evaluation of an ECD program in Colombia and partly funded by SIEF at the World Bank. We thank Sir Michael Marmot for funding by the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. Attanasio’s ESRC Professorial fellowship ES/K-1-700/1 and the ERC Advanced Grant 249612 funded the genotyping, which was carried out at King’s College in London and in Rotterdam. We are grateful to Andres Ruiz Linares at UCL for providing us with guidance on the collection of the genetic material in Colombia and for putting us in touch with researchers at the Universidad de los Andes who trained the interviewers in the DNA collection. We thank participants at the Barcelona GSE ‘Children’s Health, Well-Being, and Human Capital Formation’ Summer Forum, CDES Sustainable Development Conference, Integrating Genetics and Social Sciences Workshop, JHU Health Economics seminar, NBER Education Summer Institute, Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science seminar, SEA Conference (and our discussant Rong Hai), and VDEV/CEPR/BREAD webinar, for comments. Conti acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 819752 DEVORHBIOSHIP - ERC-2018COG). Jervis gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Institute for Research in Market Imperfections and Public Policy MIPP (ICS13 002 ANID) and the Center for Research in Inclusive Education, Chile (SCIA ANID CIE160009). Meghir thanks the Cowles foundation and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale for financial support. Okbay acknowledges financial support by the Swedish Research Council (grant numbers 2023-01343 and 2024-06499) and the Amsterdam UMC Fellowship. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.