Does Parental Separation Lower Genetic Influences on Children's School Performance?

Abstract

A behavioral genetics approach is used to test whether parental separation lowers the importance of genes for children's school performance. Background: The Scarr-Rowe hypothesis, which states that the relative importance of genes on cognitive ability is higher for advantaged compared to disadvantaged children, has been expanded to educational outcomes. However, advantage/disadvantage is predominantly conceptualized as parental socioeconomic status and neglects other important factors. This study expands upon the literature to include family structure as an indicator for advantage/disadvantage.

Parental Separation and Children’s Genetic Influences on Education across 20th Century Birth Cohorts

“…As previously discussed parental separation may not only be linked to children's education but also to their chances to fulfil their genetic potential (see Figure 1). Building on previous work (Baier and Winkle 2020), we argue that parental separation and its related family processes and circumstances carry environmental features that can moderate genetic influences on education, i.e. a gene-environment interaction (GxE).…”

“…Two studies using a twin design reported a similar finding, but studied children's internalizing and externalizing behaviour in the United States and the Netherlands (Robbers et al 2012;Hicks et al 2009). A recent twin study concentrated on educational attainment and showed that parental separation lowered genetic influences on school related skills for children born in the early 2000s in Germany (Baier and Winkle, 2020). However, twin models come with strong assumptions, which can lead to biased estimates if violated (Horwitz, Videon, and Schmitz 2003).…”

“…Most studies in this area are interested in a genetically sensitive approach to estimating the causal effect of divorce on educational attainment (e.g., D'Onofrio et al 2005D'Onofrio et al , 2006D'Onofrio et al , 2007Guo, Roettger, and Cai 2008;Nederhof et al 2012;Waldman 2007). A recent study assessed how parental separation moderated the link between genes and educational attainment on a sample of twins born in Germany in the early 2000s (Baier and Winkle 2020). They showed that parental separation lowered the relative importance of genetic influences on children's school related outcomes during middle childhood.…”

Genes and Equality of Opportunity: Lessons from a highly egalitarian country

“…Previous studies on education and income suggest that usually, the opposite is the case: genetic influences vary by the social environment, for instance, according to parents' social backgroundor other childhood family circumstances (Baier and Lang 2019;Baier and Van Winkle 2021;Branigan, McCallum, and Freese 2013;Erola et al 2022). If these correlations and interactions are not taken into account, false conclusions will be drawn about the importance of genes and the environment (cf., Beam and Turkheimer 2013;Horwitz and Neiderhiser 2011).…”

Data from the German TwinLife Study: Genetic and Social Origins of Educational Predictors, Processes, and Outcomes

“…Findings on cognitive abilities and educational outcomes based on TwinLife data are summarised by Mönkediek et al (2019) and . Further studies on educational phenomena focus on heritability and environmental effects on numeracy and literacy (as measured by school grades in mathematics and German; Eifler et al, 2019), effects of parental separation (Baier & Van Winkle, 2021), or on a trait-specific investigation of the equalenvironment assumption, i.e., the assumption that monoand dizygotic twins share environmental influences to an equal extent (Mönkediek, 2021). Educational predictors and outcomes have been analysed from numerous perspectives, including influences of unequal socioeconomic backgrounds (Mönkediek & Diewald, 2021;Paulus et al, 2021;Stienstra et al, 2021), parenting styles (Grätz et al, 2022), and motivational and personality variables (Dings & Spinath, 2021).…”