Many health behaviors of interest to demographers—including smoking, alcohol consumption, and obesity—are strongly affected by both environmental and genetic factors (Nelson et al. 2006). Emerging evidence from the gene-environment (GxE) interaction literature has made it clear that a full understanding of these complex phenomena requires some information about genetic risks but also a clear accounting of the social context in which individuals work, play, and eat (Boardman et al. 2008, 2012). This work has led to calls for a cogent and testable framework for GxE research (Bookman et al. 2011) from interdisciplinary teams (Mabry et al. 2008), which have been echoed by the National Academy of Sciences (Hernandez and Blazer 2006) and the National Science Foundation (e.g., IGERT).
