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What Causes What
MENDELIAN

25-hydroxyvitamin D → Employment status

Genetic instruments for 25(OH)D do not buy you a job. The observational D–success link was a marker.

Mendelian randomization · High confidence · N=339256

Mendelian randomization. Good against confounding; not magic against pleiotropy.

Mechanism

If lifelong higher 25(OH)D caused employment, SNPs that raise 25(OH)D should show up on socioeconomic and disease-wide scans. Meng et al. (2019) and Jiang et al. (2021) find no such general effect. Multiple sclerosis is the interesting exception in the medical catalog — not income.

Caveats

MR assumes no pleiotropy and a linear lifelong effect. It can miss threshold effects in the truly deficient. It is still the right tool for the 'D makes you successful' claim, and the claim fails.

Effect

odds_ratio = 1. MR-PheWAS and large MR catalogs do not support a causal 25(OH)D effect on general socioeconomic success.

Nodes

Biology & endocrinology25-hydroxyvitamin DSocioeconomic statusEmployment status

Named confounders

Cite this page

What Causes What. “25-hydroxyvitamin D → Employment status.” https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-vitd-employment-mr (atlas updated 2026-08-31).

https://whatcauseswhat.org/edges/e-vitd-employment-mr

Papers