More than nature and nurture, indirect genetic effects on children's academic achievement are consequences of dynastic social processes.

ABSTRACT: Families transmit genes and environments across generations. When parents' genetics affect their children's environments, these two modes of inheritance can produce an 'indirect genetic effect'. Such indirect genetic effects may account for up to half of the estimated genetic variance in educational attainment. Here we tested if indirect genetic effects reflect within-nuclear-family transmission ('genetic nurture') or instead a multi-generational process of social stratification ('dynastic effects'). We analysed indirect genetic effects on children's academic achievement in their fifth to ninth years of schooling in N = 37,117 parent-offspring trios in the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). We used pairs of genetically related families (parents were siblings, children

SUBMITTER: Nivard MG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11569812 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature