Abstract
Parental socioeconomic status (SES) is a strong predictor of children's educational achievement (EA), with an increasing effect throughout development. Inequality in educational outcomes between children from different SES backgrounds exists in all Western countries. It has been proposed that a cause of this inequality lies in the interplay between genetic effects and SES on EA, which might depend on society and the equality of the education system. This study adopted two approaches, a classical twin design and polygenic score (PGS) approach, to address the effect of parental SES on EA in a large sample of 12-year-old Dutch twin pairs (2479 MZ and 4450 DZ twin pairs with PGSs for educational attainment available in 2335 children) from the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR). The findings of this study indicated that average EA increased with increasing parental SES. The difference in EA between boys and girls became smaller in the higher SES groups. The classical twin design analyses based on genetic covariance structure modeling pointed to lower genetic, environmental, and thus phenotypic variation in EA at higher SES. Independent from a child's PGS, parental SES predicted EA. However, the strength of the association between PGS and EA did not depend on parental SES. In a within-family design, the twin with a higher PGS scored higher on EA than the co-twin, demonstrating that the effect of the PGS on EA was at least partly independent from parental SES. To conclude, EA depended on SES both directly and indirectly, and SES moderated the additive genetic and environmental components of EA. Adding information from PGS, in addition to parental SES, improved the prediction of children's EA.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 13 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-8 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | npj Science of Learning |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 3 Sept 2019 |
Funding
We are grateful to the twin families and the teachers for their participation. We gratefully acknowledge research program ‘Consortium on Individual Development (CID)’ which is funded through the Gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO: 0240-001-003); ‘Netherlands Twin Registry Repository: researching the interplay between genome and environment’ (NWO: 480-15-001/674); Twin-family study of individual differences in school achievement’ (NWO: 056-32-010); ‘Longitudinal data collection from teachers of Dutch twins and their siblings’ (NWO: 481-08-011); ‘KNAW Academy Professor Award (PAH/6635)’.
Funders | Funder number |
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Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen | |
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap | |
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 0240-001-003, 481-08-011, PAH/6635, 056-32-010, 480-15-001/674 |
Cohort Studies
- Netherlands Twin Register (NTR)