More than nature and nurture, indirect genetic effects on children’s academic achievement are consequences of dynastic social processes

Michel G. Nivard, Daniel W. Belsky, K. Paige Harden, Tina Baier, Ole A. Andreassen, Eivind Ystrøm, Elsje Bergen and Torkild H. Lyngstad ()
Additional contact information
Michel G. Nivard: Vrije Universiteit
Daniel W. Belsky: Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
K. Paige Harden: University of Texas at Austin
Tina Baier: University of Oslo
Ole A. Andreassen: University of Oslo
Eivind Ystrøm: University of Oslo
Elsje Bergen: Vrije Universiteit
Torkild H. Lyngstad: University of Oslo

Nature Human Behaviour, 2024, vol. 8, issue 4, 771-778

Abstract: Abstract Families transmit genes and environments across generations. When parents’ genetics affect their children’s environments, these two modes of inheritance can produce an ‘indirect genetic effect’. Such indirect genetic effects may account for up to half of the estimated genetic variance in educational attainment. Here we tested if indirect genetic effects reflect within-nuclear-family transmission (‘genetic nurture’) or instead a multi-generational process of social stratification (‘dynastic effects’). We analysed indirect genetic effects on children’s academic achievement in their fifth to ninth years of schooling in N = 37,117 parent–offspring trios in the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). We used pairs of genetically related families (parents were siblings, children were cousins; N = 10,913) to distinguish within-nuclear-family genetic-nurture effects from dynastic effects shared by cousins in different nuclear families. We found that indirect genetic effects on children’s academic achievement cannot be explained by processes that operate exclusively within the nuclear family.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01796-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:8:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1038_s41562-023-01796-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01796-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().