Engzell, Per;
Tropf, Felix C;
(2019)
Heritability of education rises with intergenerational mobility.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, 116
(51)
pp. 25386-25388.
10.1073/pnas.1912998116.
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Abstract
As an indicator of educational opportunity, social scientists have studied intergenerational mobility—the degree to which children’s attainment depends on that of their parents—and how it varies across place or time. We combine this research with behavior genetics to show that societal variation in mobility is rooted in family advantages that siblings share over and above genetic transmission. In societies with high intergenerational mobility, less variance in educational attainment is attributable to the shared sibling environment. Variance due to genetic factors is largely constant, but its share as a part of total variance, heritability, rises with mobility. Our results suggest that environmental differences underlie variation in intergenerational mobility, and that there is no tension between egalitarian policies and the realization of individual genetic potential.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Heritability of education rises with intergenerational mobility |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.1912998116 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912998116 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Attribution License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | educational attainment, intergenerational mobility, heritability |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10168744 |
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