Abstract
The two best predictors of children's educational achievement available from birth are parents’ socioeconomic status (SES) and, recently, children's inherited DNA differences that can be aggregated in genome‐wide polygenic scores (GPS). Here, we chart for the first time the developmental interplay between these two predictors of educational achievement at ages 7, 11, 14 and 16 in a sample of almost 5,000 UK school children. We show that the prediction of educational achievement from both GPS and SES increases steadily throughout the school years. Using latent growth curve models, we find that GPS and SES not only predict educational achievement in the first grade but they also account for systematic changes in achievement across the school years. At the end of compulsory education at age 16, GPS and SES, respectively, predict 14% and 23% of the variance of educational achievement. Analyses of the extremes of GPS and SES highlight their influence and interplay: In children who have high GPS and come from high SES families, 77% go to university, whereas 21% of children with low GPS and from low SES backgrounds attend university. We find that the associations of GPS and SES with educational achievement are primarily additive, suggesting that their joint influence is particularly dramatic for children at the extreme ends of the distribution.
Highlights
Until recently, measures of parents' socioeconomic status (SES) have been the most powerful predictors available from birth of differences in the normal range of children's educational achievement
We found that genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) contributed even more to children's differences in growth in educational achievement (3.3% of the variance) as it did to their differences at the beginning of compulsory schooling (2.4%)
Our analyses showed that SES contributed less to the growth in educational achievement (5.4%) than it did to children's performance differences that are stable throughout compulsory schooling (9.9%)
Summary
Measures of parents' socioeconomic status (SES) have been the most powerful predictors available from birth of differences in the normal range of children's educational achievement. In recent years, inherited DNA differences have been identified that can predict educational achievement It has been known from twin and adoption studies that genetic differences taken as a whole account for most of the variance in educational achievement, with heritability estimates typically around 60% for all subjects at all ages (de Zeeuw, de Geus, & Boomsma, 2015; Rimfeld et al, 2018). The expression of the genome is modifiable and influenced by environmental factors, inherited DNA differences do not change throughout life It follows that a GPS can predict 16-yearold educational achievement just as well at birth as it can at age 16. Genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS) and socioeconomic status (SES) account together for 27% of the variance in educational achievement from age 7 through 16 years. A growth curve model allows testing for interaction effects of GPS and SES, thereby evaluating the gene-by-environment interaction hypothesis that the influence of genetic factors on cognitive development is weaker in lower SES families (Gottschling et al, 2019; Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016)
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