Abstract
Most individual-level outcomes of interest to sociologists are indirectly influenced by genetics, including socioeconomic outcomes like education, income, wealth, and occupational status. Despite this knowledge, an integration of sociological theories of class with the research literature on genetic heritability is largely lacking, and no previous studies have investigated the role of genetics for class attainment – a central concept in sociological theory and research. To amend this, we estimate how much variation in class positions can be attributed to genetic and environmental factors in roughly 5000 Norwegian twin pairs. The results suggest that the variability in class attainment is genetic to a non-negligible degree, while shared environmental factors play a (modest) role as well. This is in line with previous findings using genetically informed designs to study other socioeconomic outcomes. Our study suggests that in addition to social environments, class outcomes can be partly explained by genetics.