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Are Attitudes Towards Economic Risk Heritable? Analyses Using the Australian Twin Study of Gambling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2012

Anh T. Le
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University of Technology, Australia.
Paul W. Miller*
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University of Technology, Australia. [email protected]
Wendy S. Slutske
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, United States of America.
Nicholas G. Martin
Affiliation:
Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Australia.
*
*Address for correspondence: Paul W. Miller, School of Economics and Finance, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987 Perth WA 6845, Australia.

Abstract

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This study employs multiple regression models based on DeFries and Fulker (1985), and a large sample of twins, to assess heritability in attitudes towards economic risk, and the extent to which this heritability differs between males and females. Consistent with Cesarini et al. (2009), it is found that attitudes towards risk are moderately heritable, with about 20 percent of the variation in these attitudes across individuals being linked to genetic differences. This value is less than one-half the estimates reported by Zyphur et al. (2009) and Zhong et al. (2009). While females are more risk averse than males, there is no evidence that heritability in attitudes towards risk differs between males and females. Even though heritability is shown to be important to economic risk-taking, the analyses suggest that multivariate studies of the determinants of attitudes towards risk which to not take heritability into consideration still provide reliable estimates of the partial effects of other key variables, such as gender and educational attainment.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010