TY - JOUR T1 - Biogeographic Ancestry and Socioeconomic Outcomes in the Americas: a Meta-analysis JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/055681 SP - 055681 AU - Emil O. W. Kirkegaard AU - Mingrui Wang AU - John Fuerst Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/27/055681.abstract N2 - Admixture analyses attempt to infer if medical-related outcome differences between populations and selfidentified race/ethnic (SIRE) groups have a genetic etiology by ascertaining whether biogeographical ancestry (BGA) is associated with outcomes in admixed populations. Narrative reports suggest that socioeconomic status (SES) covaries with BGA in the Americas. If this is generally the case, SES potentially acts as a confound and needs to be taken into account when evaluating the relation between medical outcomes and BGA. To explore how systematic BGA-SES associations are, a meta-analysis of American studies was conducted. 41 studies yielded a total of 166 datapoints and 76 non-overlapping effect sizes. An analysis of effect directions found a high degree of consistency in directions. The N-weighted directions were .97, -.95 and -.94 for European, Amerindian and African ancestry, respectively. An analysis of effect sizes found that European BGA was positively associated with SES r = .18 [95% CI: .13 to .22, K=27, N=34,233.5], while both Amerindian and African BGA were negatively associated at -.15 [-.20 to -.10, K=26, N=20,657.5] and -.11 [-.16 to -.07, K=23, N=28,813.5], respectively. There was considerable cross-study variation in effect sizes (mean I2=92%), but there were too few datapoints to permit credible moderator analysis. Implications for future studies are discussed. ER -