NORWICH, United Kingdom — Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory is being put to the test. Darwin’s theory expounded that organisms which can better adapt to their environment are more likely to survive and produce more offspring. However, a new study by British researchers reveals natural selection may be making society more unequal.
Researchers from the University of East Anglia find that natural selection is favoring poorer people with little education. The study “shows how natural selection effects are stronger in groups with lower income and less education, among younger parents, people not living with a partner, and people with more lifetime sexual partners.”
On the flip side, natural selection “is pushing against genes” associated with highly educated individuals, people who have more lifetime earnings, those who have a low risk of ADHD or major depressive disorders, and those with a lower risk of coronary artery disease.
“Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that all species develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce,” says lead researcher David Hugh-Jones, a professor from UEA’s School of Economics, in a university release. “We wanted to find out more about which characteristics are selected for and against in contemporary humans, living in the UK.”
‘Polygenic scores’ prove Darwin’s natural selection theory no longer valid?
Researchers analyzed the polygenic scores of more than 300,000 people in the United Kingdom, taken from the UK Biobank, which is a long-term project investigating the contributions of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to the development of disease. The polygenic scores estimate a person’s genetic liability, a prediction of their health, education, lifestyle, or personality.
Researchers then used data on two generations of people living in the U.K. by looking at their number of siblings and number of children.
“We found that 23 out of 33 polygenic scores were significantly linked to a person having more or fewer children over their lifetime,” explains Hugh-Jones. “Scores which correlated with lower earnings and education predicted having more children, meaning those scores are being selected for from an evolutionary perspective.”
Meanwhile, researchers say scores correlating to those with higher earnings and better education predicted having fewer children, “meaning that they are being selected against.”
“Natural selection could be making society more unequal, by increasing the correlation between income and polygenic scores, including scores that predict health and education outcomes,” the study author continues.
Using the economic theory of fertility, researchers say those with higher earnings can afford more children. However, since it is costly to spend time on childcare instead of their job, they will miss out on higher wages.
“The first effect leads people to have more children, the second effect leads them to have fewer,” Hugh-Jones concludes.
The study is published in the journal Behavior Genetics.
Darwin wrote about Natural selection.
This article is about something else entirely. Anyone trying to tweak the findings to make sense of it is wasting their time.
That the authors were this dense is mind numbing.
Progressive systems penalize (tax) wealth and success while rewarding (subsidizing) poverty and failure. Should anyone be surprized that the result is more poor, uneducated people who are dependent on government subsidies?
More worker bees to supply the desires of the queens.
The poor should be taxed out of existence. and their meagre wealth transferred to the wealthy.
Money is the measure of all things. If you want more of it you should subsidize it. If you want more wealthy people you should subsidize their existence, and if you want less poverty you should tax them out of existence.
It only makes Christian Republican sense.
Preach to the choir much? This has been so obvious for most of my adult life, and I cannot be the first to understand it. It’s been a fact for centuries, or at least since industrialization. Rural, backwood rednecks, farmers, and (in modern society) common laborers are getting things done in the bedroom. Gays, Richy Richies, Tea and Crumpets Housewives, and your wealthy merchants are too busy or self-absorbed to have families.
The only rich dudes having lots of kids are basketball stars and musicians.
Darwin Awards are real, not a theory. My favorite is the drunk guy on a farm tractor who dropped his 1/2 empty handle of whiskey, then jumped off to retrieve it under the tractor while forgetting it was still in gear.
All this study proves is that evolution is selecting the dumbest to become professors.
Humans’ primary competition is with other humans. Equality is for those who stopped competing. I don’t want to be equal, I want to be better. That’s a hard attitude to breed out.
Better than what?
Historically rapists have been better at breeding.
Since when is society supposed to be “equal”? Darwinism chooses the most fit, not those that are equal to everyone else …
It didn’t take a study to show that poor stupid people have more low quality kids than richer more intelligent people who generally wait until later in life to get started.
And yet the wealthy are the ones with the weak children.
The Drumpf family provides an excellent example.
I wouldn’t give a dime for any of his worthless children.
Humans are unique in that Natural selection is not the only mechanism in play. For example, we can make conscious decisions to act against our own self-interest, or for that matter, the interests of our species survival. The study is flawed in that it does not account for this HUGE group of confounding factors.
The researchers fail to distinguish between the demand for the number of children and the demand for the quality of children. At higher income levels parents have a greater value for quality, which they substitute for quantity. While it is true that the opportunity cost of time may cause women prefer smaller families, it is also true that women at lower incomes may lack access to birth control.
Whatever the direction of evolutionary forces, which take far longer than this study suggests, the forces of economics are the cause of growing inequality. There is nothing natural about income and wealth inequality. It depends on the rules of society. It is not too much of a stretch to predict that cutting taxes from a rate of 75% on income to a rate of 37% lead to growing income inequality as observed in the US. The choice of tax rate is a policy decision; thus, inequality is a choice that societies make.
Anthropologists have demonstrated that the most successful societies have been hunter gatherers who live for millennia without what we would consider civilization. However, studies have also shown that they had a far more variable diet than people in agricultural societies. Indeed, inequality was built into the very concept of civilization, and early civilization is marked by a noticeable worsening of the diets and overall health of its citizens compared to those “backwards” hunter gatherers. And while civilization is leading to the destruction of the human biosphere, the worse we can blame hunter gatherers for is possibly hunting to extinction mega fauna that most people are happy not to encounter in their daily lives.
In short, I agree we are going backwards, but the forces are far less arcane.
Quantum fluctuations, locked in by the normal repair function in every cell, drive evolution.
Somebody doesn’t understand evolution. Evolution doesn’t make a species better, it helps it adapt. That only requires getting to the age of procreation, and if gaming the system makes more babies, that will win out naturally in the long run over those that are smarter. And having fewer babies.
Nothing in the theory predicts outcomes, only explains why outcomes are reached. And it explains today’s society perfectly in my opinion.
That is the premise of the 1990 movie Idioticacy
Dumb researchers…kids cost money. Of course those with more kids are poorer. There’s my theory…economic well-being is inversely correlated to the number of offspring.
It’s called survival of the fittest. There is no equity.
The movie version was called Idiocracy.
Since when are education levels and income levels genetic? This has nothing to do with Darwin at all! Who paid for this “research”?
Thank you… ‘Social Darwinism’ is a term associated with Eugenics and the Nazis. If a Rightie had written this, the usual suspects would be screaming for the head of the piece. But when a Leftie Gen Snowflake gets paid by the word for drivel like this, they get a pass for pushing one of the most offensive ‘theories’ ever put forth. Darwin would be appalled. Hey Lefties, you realize that Social Darwinism (which is all this boils down to) was used to justify slavery and colonization, right? Pathetic. I mean, I had to read it twice because I couldn’t believe it would pass editorial muster the first time. WTF are they teaching these kids? My God!
Doesn’t matter. 7 billion people on the planet. Hundreds, if not thousands, of virologists planning and working hard to kill most of us. More than enough smart people passing on their genes.
John Huppernthal = Mental illness on full public display.
JB’s top comment is incorrectly assuming that the lower classes are CHOOSING to have all these kids; that the women are looking at the abundance of welfare and consciously deciding that they will get pregnant repeatedly and bear children. This is laughably naive.
The lower classes have so many kids because they don’t practice family planning, they don’t take precautions during sex, and when they do get pregnant a combination of ignorance, religion, and financial poverty leads them to keep the child rather than abort it. Then a year or so later, the cycle repeats, and repeats again, and again.
This is why the ignorant and the irresponsible are having so many children. The intelligent realize that it’s a shit world to bring up a kid in, so they take precautions to prevent procreation (by various means).
As has been said by others: it’s ‘Idiocracy’, not welfare queens.
Before civilization, humans relied on natural selection to increase population. Civilization is dependent on laws to improve outcomes. The article focuses on outcomes such as wealth and education which will only improve if politics and laws improve. Civilization separates us from the natural world.
“Before civilization, humans relied on natural selection to increase population.”
Absolute nonsense.