GWAS of 126,559 Individuals Identifies Genetic Variants Associated with Educational Attainment

Abstract

A genome-wide association study of educational attainment was conducted in a discovery sample of 101,069 individuals and a replication sample of 25,490. Three independent SNPs are genome-wide significant (rs9320913, rs11584700, rs4851266), and all three replicate. Estimated effects sizes are small (R2 ≈ 0.02%), approximately 1 month of schooling per allele. A linear polygenic score from all measured SNPs accounts for ≈ 2% of the variance in both educational attainment and cognitive function. Genes in the region of the loci have previously been associated with health, cognitive, and central nervous system phenotypes, and bioinformatics analyses suggest the involvement of the anterior caudate nucleus. These findings provide promising candidate SNPs for follow-up work, and our effect size estimates can anchor power analyses in social-science genetics.

Insights into the Genetic Foundations of Human Communication

“…GWAS studies for social behavior have faced similar difficulties (Ebstein et al 2010;St Pourcain et al 2013, 2014b). However, a GWAS for educational attainment in over 100,000 individuals identified three SNPs which reached genome-wide significance, and these associations were replicated in a further sample of 25,000 individuals (Rietveld et al 2013), illustrating that very large sample sizes do have the power to detect small contributions from common SNPs to normal phenotypic variation.…”

Genes and Gini: What Inequality Means for Heritability

“…It is likely that in the near future most DNA variants that drive the heritability of each trait will be established. Two recent large-scale molecular genetic studies, using DNA and attainment data from 127,000 and 329,000 participants, have already identified a number of DNA variants involved in educational attainment and achievement (Rietveld et al, 2013;Okbay et al, 2016).…”

An Introduction to Thinking about Trustworthy Research into the Genetics of Intelligence

“…In 2013, a group of researchers-the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium-published an article in Science on three genetic variants that are associated with educational attainment (which they took to be a proxy for intelligence) and simultaneously posted an essay that explained in plain English how the study was conducted and what it did-and did not-find. 16 They explained why they had not found "the gene for educational attainment" and why it would be "extremely premature" to infer policy implications from their findings. While the SSGAC may be the best example of prophylaxis against hyperbole to which we can point, other contributors in this collection (see the contributions by James Tabery, Sarah Richardson, and Shawneequa Callier and Vence Bonham) offer examples of behavioral or population geneticists who have taken similar steps.…”