The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion

Abstract

Recently, several genome-wide association studies of educational attainment have found education-related genetic variants and enabled the integration of human inheritance into social research. This study incorporates the newest education polygenic score (Lee et al. 2018) into sociological research, and tests three gene-environment interaction hypotheses on status attainment. Using the Health and Retirement Study (N = 7,625), I report three findings. First, a standard deviation increase in the education polygenic score is associated with a 60% increase in the likelihood of advancing to the next level of education, while a standard deviation increase in parental education results in a 68% increase. Second, supporting the Saunders hypothesis, the genetic effect becomes 11% smaller when parental education is one standard deviation higher, indicating that highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation. Finally, the genetic effect is slightly greater for the younger cohort (1942~59) than the older cohort (1920~41). The findings strengthen the existing literature on the social influences in helping children achieve their innate talents.

Predicting the Adult Clinical and Academic Outcomes in Boys With ADHD: A 7- to 10-Year Follow-Up Study in China

“…Another study showed that school performance increased in youth when parental education was improved ( 44 ). Sociologists also found that wealthier families were frequently better able to provide offspring with superior resources, and these, in turn, assure their academic success ( 45 ). Therefore, through providing additional financial support to children with lower family economic incomes and encouraging parents to continue learning, management of those areas early on may assist in improving their adult functioning, including educational attainment.…”

“…Therefore, through providing additional financial support to children with lower family economic incomes and encouraging parents to continue learning, management of those areas early on may assist in improving their adult functioning, including educational attainment. The mechanism underlying this intergenerational transmission of educational attainment requires further exploration but includes genetic influences and gene–environment interaction effects ( 45 ).…”

Parental Separation and Children’s Genetic Influences on Education across 20th Century Birth Cohorts

“…Previous research on the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis has mainly focused on cognitive ability (e.g., Figlio et al, 2017;Guo and Stearns, 2002;Turkheimer et al, 2003;Gottschling et al 2017), although recent studies shifted the focus to education (e.g., Baier and Lang 2019;Conley et al 2015:201;Domingue et al 2015;Erola et al 2021;Lin 2020). Nearly all studies on the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis used some indicator of parents' social standing to capture differences in the quality of the rearing environment.…”

“…A recent study for Norway does not report any systematic variation in education PGS by parental social background (Isunget et al 2021), while findings for the United States remain mixed (Conley et al 2015;Domingue et al 2015). A recent study by Lin (2020) used the most recent, and therefore more predictive educational PGS (Lee et al 2018), and found that the importance of genes tends to decrease by parents' education.…”

“…established line of research has focused on the importance of parents' socio-economic standing and examined whether genetic influences on cognitive abilities and education are stronger for children that grow up in socioeconomically advantaged families (e.g., Baier and Lang 2019;Conley et al 2015;Erola et al 2021;Figlio et al 2017;Gottschling et al 2019;Guo and Stearns 2002;Lin 2020;Turkheimer et al 2003). These studies argue that advantaged parents provide resource-rich environmental conditions that are tailored to children's needs and facilitate the realization of genetic influences on IQ (Rowe, Jacobson, and Oord 1999;Scarr-Salapatek 1971).…”