The Genetics of Success

Abstract

Previous genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) of >100,000 individuals identified molecular-genetic predictors of educational attainment. We undertook in-depth life-course investigation of the polygenic score derived from this GWAS using the four-decade Dunedin Study (N=918). There were five main findings. First, polygenic scores predicted adult economic outcomes over and above completed education. Second, genes and environments were correlated; children with higher polygenic scores were born into better-off homes. Third, polygenic scores predicted children’s adult outcomes net of social-class origins; children with higher scores tended to be upwardly-socially-mobile. Fourth, polygenic scores predicted behavior across the life-course, from learning to talk earlier to acquiring reading skills more quickly, through geographic mobility and mate choice, on to financial planning for retirement. Fifth, polygenic-score associations were mediated by psychological characteristics including intelligence, self-control, and interpersonal skill. Effects were small. Factors connecting DNA sequence with life outcomes may provide targets for interventions to promote population-wide positive development.

The new genetics of intelligence

“…Associations between environmental measures and behavioural traits such as intelligence are also mediated in part by genetic differences. Research using GPS is beginning to confirm these twin study findings about the ‘nature of nurture’ by showing, for example, that EA GPS correlate with social mobility64 and capture covariation between environmental exposures and children’s behaviour problems and educational achievement65. GE correlation provides a general model for how genotypes become phenotypes — how children select, modify and create environments correlated with their genetic propensities.…”

Large-Scale Cognitive GWAS Meta-Analysis Reveals Tissue-Specific Neural Expression and Potential Nootropic Drug Targets

“…In part, the difficulty with cognitive GWAS may be caused by the relative heterogeneity in the measurement of the cognitive phenotype. Traditionally, general cognitive ability ( g ) has been defined as a latent trait underlying shared variance across multiple subdomains of cognitive performance, psychometrically obtained as the first principal component of several distinct neuropsychological test scores (Johnson et al, 2008). Using this approach, several cognitive GWAS with fewer than 20,000 subjects yielded no genome-wide significant (GWS) effects (Benyamin et al, 2013; Davies et al, 2011b; Lencz et al, 2014), while a few GWS loci were identified in larger GWAS of 35,298 (Trampush et al, 2017) and 53,949 (Davies et al, 2015) subjects, respectively.…”

“…It is acknowledged that this phenotype is ‘noisy’, as it is influenced by non-cognitive genetic (Belsky et al, 2016) (e.g., personality) and environmental (Johnson et al, 2010) (e.g., socio-economic) factors; consequently, observed allelic effect sizes have been even smaller than those obtained for GWAS of g (Rietveld et al, 2013). However, by utilizing a single-item measure (years of education completed), obtained incidentally in large studies of other phenotypes, this approach has allowed investigators to obtain extremely large sample sizes.…”

Genetic influence on social outcomes during and after the Soviet era in Estonia

“…A GPS from a GWA study of educational attainment ( EduYears )19 predicts 4% of the variance of educational attainment in independent samples19–22. No GWA studies of occupational status have been reported, but educational attainment and occupational status correlate about 0.50 phenotypically23–25, and the EduYears GPS for educational attainment predicts 2% of the variance of occupational status21, 2% of the variance of SES21,26, and 7% of the variance of family SES using children’s DNA27. GPS heritability (2-7%) is lower than SNP heritability (20%) in part because GPS heritability is limited to specific SNPs shown to be associated with a trait and it includes the trait’s measurement error.…”