Estimating effects of parents’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills on offspring education using polygenic scores

Abstract

Understanding how parents’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills influence offspring education is essential for educational, family and economic policy. We use genetics (GWAS-by-subtraction) to assess a latent, broad non-cognitive skills dimension. To index parental effects controlling for genetic transmission, we estimate indirect parental genetic effects of polygenic scores on childhood and adulthood educational outcomes, using siblings (N = 47,459), adoptees (N = 6407), and parent-offspring trios (N = 2534) in three UK and Dutch cohorts. We find that parental cognitive and non-cognitive skills affect offspring education through their environment: on average across cohorts and designs, indirect genetic effects explain 36–40% of population polygenic score associations. However, indirect genetic effects are lower for achievement in the Dutch cohort, and for the adoption design. We identify potential causes of higher sibling- and trio-based estimates: prenatal indirect genetic effects, population stratification, and assortative mating. Our phenotype-agnostic, genetically sensitive approach has established overall environmental effects of parents’ skills, facilitating future mechanistic work.

The Cognitive Profile of Gifted Children Compared to Those of Their Parents: A Descriptive Study Using the Wechsler Scales

“…The correlations obtained from the mother-child dyads were statistically significant or close to statistical significance and were higher than for the father-child dyads. In general, the correlations estimated in our study were somewhat lower than those typically reported in previous research with nongifted community samples ( Anger and Heineck 2010 ; Calderon and Hoddinott 2010 ; Demange et al 2022 ; Grönqvist et al 2010 ). One factor that may have limited the magnitude of the correlations in our study might be traced to the rank restriction of total IQ, which we used as an entry criterion in the study.…”

“…These results appear to be consistent with data reported in the literature that compared the cognitive abilities of mothers and fathers with those of their typically developing children. More specifically, it was found that mothers’ cognitive abilities (e.g., executive functioning, working memory, verbal IQ) correlated with children’s cognitive abilities, whereas fathers’ non-cognitive abilities (e.g., academic motivation, perseverance, mindsets, learning strategies, and social skills) correlated with their children’s cognitive abilities (e.g., Demange et al 2022 ; Grönqvist et al 2010 ).…”

“…When researchers examined the concordance of parents’ cognitive level with that of their children, the data collected suggested that there is greater consistency in mother-child dyads than in father-child dyads ( Anger and Heineck 2010 ; Calderon and Hoddinott 2010 ; Demange et al 2022 ; Grönqvist et al 2010 ). For example, Anger and Heineck ( 2010 ) showed that the correlations of IQ between parents and children were r ≈ .34 for father-daughter dyads and r ≈ .48 for mother-daughter dyads.…”

Do environmental effects indexed by parental genetic variation influence common psychiatric symptoms in childhood?

“…Additionally, as all current findings are based on 8-year-olds of European ancestry in a Norwegian cohort, it is unknown to what extent these effects are present in other populations and at other developmental periods. For example, differences in the importance of genetic nurture effects on childhood educational achievement between Dutch and British samples were observed in a recent study [ 33 ]. Given that environmental influences on mental health may vary across communities and developmental stages, it is plausible that potential indirect genetic effects could be of differential importance in different contexts.…”

Intergenerational effects of parental educational attainment on parenting and childhood educational outcomes: Evidence from MoBa using within-family Mendelian randomization

“…Our models controlled for principal components of population stratification, so residual population structure is unlikely to explain our results. Another mechanism could be assortative mating and dynastic effects from the grandparent generation or via sibling effects [43]. Future studies should use larger samples of multi-generation families or imputed grandparental genotypes to investigate this hypothesis.…”