The Big (Genetic) Sort? Reassessing Migration Patterns and Their Genetic Imprint in the UK

This study reassesses Abdel Abdellaoui et al.’s findings that genetically selective migration may lead to persistent and accumulating socioeconomic and health inequalities between “types” (rich or poor) of places in the UK. Their work categorized migrants who moved to the same “type” of place (rich-to-rich or poor-to-poor) as non-migrants. We re-investigate the question of genetically selective migration by examining migration patterns between places rather than “place-types” and find genetic selectively in whether people migrate rather than where . For example, we find evidence of positive selection of people with genetic variants correlated better education moving from rich to poor places with our measure of migration that was obscured in the earlier work that used a non-standard measure of migration.