Policies that justify and reinforce socioeconomic inequality create environmental conditions that have genetic effects on both current and future generations.

For example, while the term “genetic enhancement” may typically refer to the use of genetic modification techniques to improve specific characteristics or traits in humans, genetic enhancement can occur without bioengineering interventions.

Over the last decade, a substantial body of research has shown individual differences in cognition, affect and behavior are driven by an interplay between a person’s inherited DNA differences (genetic propensities) and environmental conditions (e.g., social, political, economic, technological, natural and biophysical).¹

As a result of this interplay, people actively evoke, create, modify and select into environments⁴²³ that best align with their genetic propensities.⁴²⁰

When we make choices for preferred social environments and experiences, the choices we make are not independent of this interplay. This does not negate human agency. Instead, it suggests that our agency is always operating within a set of biological and environmental constraints that we do not freely choose.

As psychologists Christopher Beam and Eric Turkheimer note, people tend not to select environments randomly: rather, their genetically influenced traits guide them toward settings where they are more likely to succeed.⁸⁵

However, access to these environments depends on social, economic and institutional conditions that can vary significantly across individuals and groups.

Psychologists Frank Mann, Colin DeYoung and colleagues write: “…individuals are not randomly assigned to social-relational environments. Rather, individuals select into and evoke responses from environments based on their heritable characteristics.”²²⁴

Psychologist and behavioral genetics researcher Sophie von Stumm and colleagues reinforce the point that people “are systematically assorted to environments rather than randomly distributed across them”¹ and that “children are assorted to environments in line with their genetic propensities.”¹⁰ For example, “Children’s differences in early life cognitive development are driven by the interplay of genetic and environmental factors.”¹⁰

As a result, economic policies that favor and reinforce socioeconomic stratification enhance the advantages of those whose genetic propensities and traits are better aligned with those policies, reinforcing existing economic inequities.