2022
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/m4eqv
|View full text |Cite
Preprint
|
Sign up to set email alerts
|

Conventional twin studies overestimate the environmental differences between families relevant to educational attainment

Abstract: Heritability estimates for educational attainment (EA) average 41-43% across international studies using the Classical Twin Design (CTD) while estimates of shared environmental influence are among the highest for any behavioural trait, averaging 31-36%. However, high parental correlations for EA in this literature and high correlations for dizygotic twins relative to studies of non-twin siblings suggest these CTD-based estimates may be biased by unmodelled assortative mating and/or twin-specific shared environ… Show more

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...
2
1

Citation Types

0
3
0

Year Published

2022
2022
2024
2024

Publication Types

Select...
4
2
1

Relationship

0
7

Authors

Journals

citations
Cited by 9 publications
(3 citation statements)
references
References 51 publications
(108 reference statements)
0
3
0
Order By: Relevance
“…Coefficients for adoptees were slightly higher in these analyses. The presence of own-birth siblings in the family could contribute to between-sibling interaction effects, leading to similarity of adoptees and siblings and in turn more similarity with the parents as has been alluded to in the literature (Nielsen 2006;Wolfram and Morris 2023). The coefficients for Norwegian-born siblings were nevertheless larger than those for adoptees.…”
Section: Sensitivity Analysesmentioning
confidence: 92%
“…Coefficients for adoptees were slightly higher in these analyses. The presence of own-birth siblings in the family could contribute to between-sibling interaction effects, leading to similarity of adoptees and siblings and in turn more similarity with the parents as has been alluded to in the literature (Nielsen 2006;Wolfram and Morris 2023). The coefficients for Norwegian-born siblings were nevertheless larger than those for adoptees.…”
Section: Sensitivity Analysesmentioning
confidence: 92%
“…In fact, the level of education has been shown to directly influence migration behaviour in Europe and the US [20][21][22] . EA is a heritable trait with heritability estimates ranging from 4% to more than 50%, depending on the definition and study design [23][24][25][26] . Thus, it is natural to expect that recent migrations can be associated with EA-associated genetic variants and so affect the geographical pattern of allele distribution in a non-random fashion.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Although Burt is correct that using current PGSs to control for genetic influences is partial at best, a well-established literature going back to the 1970s has used genetically sensitive study designs to investigate social science outcomes. These not only include conventional twin studies (which consistently show genetic differences account for a substantial share of the observed individual differences in social science outcomes, e.g., Frisell, Pawitan, Långström, & Lichtenstein, 2012;Hyytinen, Ilmakunnas, Johansson, & Toivanen, 2019;Silventoinen et al, 2020) but also a panoply of other genetically sensitive designs, such as adoption designs, extended twin designs, sibling difference designs, and more (Baier, Eilertsen, Ystrom, Zambrana, & Lyngstad, 2022;Björklund & Salvanes, 2011;Holmlund, Lindahl, & Plug, 2011;Sariaslan et al, 2021;Wolfram & Morris, 2022). These various designs show substantially attenuated statistical associations between predictor and outcome after controlling for genetic confounds and sometimes remove the original association altogether.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%