Título: Does Children's Genetic Risk for ADHD Affect Parental Divorce?
Sala: E22
Hora: 12:30
Resumen: This paper estimates the causal effect of children's genetic risk for ADHD on parental divorce, using polygenic scores (PGS) as the source of variation. Drawing on ~15,000 UK families from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), we exploit Mendelian inheritance: conditional on parental genotype, a child's ADHD PGS is quasi-random through meiotic recombination (Kong 2018; Young 2022; Howe 2022), eliminating confounding by parental genetics, environment, and assortative mating. Controlling for the mother's ADHD PGS and 20 ancestry principal components, a one-standard-deviation increase in the child's ADHD PGS raises the probability of parental divorce by 1.8 / 2.5 / 4.7 percentage points by the time the child is 5 / 11 / 17 — a monotone increase consistent with ADHD operating as a chronic family stressor. A clean falsification at 21 months —before ADHD symptoms emerge — passes (p = 0.18), validating the design. Coefficient-stability bounds (Oster 2019) and an autism-PGS specificity test rule out the most plausible alternatives. The findings suggest a role for family-centered approaches in ADHD treatment.