Genomic Evidence for Clark's Theory of the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Clark (2007, 2025) posits that the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth century was partly facilitated by a gradual evolutionary shift in the distribution of income-enhancing traits such as cognitive ability, thrift, and future-oriented behaviour. Using 4,902 genotyped DNA samples from Europe, we find a statistically significant positive time trend in educational attainment polygenic index scores during the period from about 12,000 years ago to the nineteenth century. This replicates and extends the findings in Woodley et al. (2017), Kuijpers et al. (2022), Piffer and Kirkegaard (2024) and Akbari et al. (2026). The positive trend is large enough to serve as a contributory factor to the Industrial Revolution. In Great Britain, the trend accelerated after the Black Death of the 14th century; the evidence is not conclusive whether this post-Black Death trend acceleration occurred more widely.