Estimating effects of parents' cognitive and non-cognitive skills on offspring education using polygenic scores.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how parents' cognitive and non-cognitive skills influence offspring education is essential for educational, family and economic policy. We use genetics (GWAS-by-subtraction) to assess a latent, broad non-cognitive skills dimension. To index parental effects controlling for genetic transmission, we estimate indirect parental genetic effects of polygenic scores on childhood and adulthood educational outcomes, using siblings (N = 47,459), adoptees (N = 6407), and parent-offspring trios (N = 2534) in three UK and Dutch cohorts. We find that parental cognitive and non-cognitive skills affect offspring education through their environment: on average across cohorts and designs, indirect genetic effects explain 36-40% of population polygenic score associations. However, indirect gene

SUBMITTER: Demange PA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9399113 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature