Do Children's Genes Evoke Educational Expectations? Direct Genetic Effects on Parents' and Teachers' College Encouragement

Philipp Dierker and Dalton Conley

No 35576, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Parents’ and teachers’ expectations and aspirations are critical drivers of educational outcomes, yet what causally shapes these expectations remains unclear. In the present study, we address this question by deploying the random experiment of meiosis: namely, conditional on parental genotype, offspring genotype is random, allowing for the unconfounding of unique child characteristics from the more general family and household environment. Using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we employ Mendelian imputation to estimate the direct genetic effects of 18 polygenic indices on college encouragement, net of parental genetic background. The genetic propensity for educational attainment and mathematical ability predict stronger expectations of college attendance, while smoking behavior predicts weaker expectations. Psychiatric traits show no effects after multiple-testing correction, indicating that responses are concentrated on cognitive and behavioral traits. Mediation analysis finds that prospectively measured teachers’ encouragement accounts for roughly a quarter of the genetic effects on educational attainment for cognitive traits, but not for psychiatric traits. Genetic effects on expectations are amplified among high-SES parents and first-born children. Thus, genetic influences on educational expectations are narrow in trait scope and uneven across families, with encouragement serving as one channel linking genetic differences to educational inequality.

JEL-codes: I19 I24 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
Note: CH ED
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