An Anatomy of Intergenerational Transmission: Learning from the educational attainments of Norwegian twins and their children

Abstract

Research on the intergenerational transmission of educational attainment, and transmission of social positions more generally, have long attempted to separate the relative roles of ascription and achievement. In these efforts, the bulk of research has ignored genetic inheritance. We use structural equations models and data on 4590 twin pairs and their parents to distinguish the roles of genetic and environmental influences on educational attainment in Norway, a country with high affordability and easy access to education at all levels. Our quantitative genetic models confirm the status quo; not of sociology, but of behavior genetics. Heritable factors play an important role in the transmission process, and the postulated direct effects of parents own educational attainments are negligible. The family environment does matter, but only those features that are shared between the twins themselves and not those that involve their parents. These results represent a challenge to conventional sociological theory on intergenerational transmission processes and the role of education in social stratification.

Socioeconomic background and gene-environment interplay in social stratification across the early life course

“…The Finnish findings can be compared to the results from a similar institutional setting of Norway. Lyngstad et al (2017) discovered-much in line with the Finnish resultsthat the share of variance in educational attainment attributable to the additive genetic variance is around 45%. In contrast to the Finnish studies, they found that the shared family background accounts for only 19% of the variance.…”

“…This is especially in contrast with the established findings in the literature on education, which usually provides evidence for the substantial influence of the shared environment (Branigan et al, 2013). The results also differ from the studies on older twin cohorts in Finland finding a stronger effect of the shared environment (Silventoinen et al, 2004;Nisén et al, 2013), but are closer to the findings on more recent cohorts in Norway with similar institutional settings (Lyngstad et al, 2017). The result is in line with previous Finnish studies on income (Hyytinen et al, 2019) and socioeconomic attainment (Karhula et al, 2019).…”

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

“…Indirect genetic effects of sibling EA PGS were found in an Icelandic cohort (Kong et al 2018). One extended twin study found that the sibling environment contributed 12% of the total variation in educational attainment in Norway, whereas the environment provided by parents explained only 2.5% of the variance (Lyngstad et al 2017).…”

“…One extended twin study found that the sibling environment contributed 12% of the total phenotypic variation in educational attainment in Norway, whereas the environment provided by parents explained only 2.5% of the variance 31 . It is possible that our PGS analyses were not sufficiently powered to detect indirect genetic effects of siblings, since they were based on lower sample size than our main analyses.…”

Intergenerational transmission of education and mental health

“…However, other UK Biobank studies have detected indirect effects of older siblings' EA PGS on younger siblings' educational attainment 184 , and parental compensation for sibling EA PGS differences 185 , suggesting that more subtle analyses are required to understand sibling effects. There is also some evidence for sibling effects on educational attainment in other populations, based on the EA PGS 156 and on extended twin family data 186 . It is possible that our PGS analyses were not sufficiently powered to detect indirect genetic effects of siblings, since they were based on lower sample size than our main analyses.…”