LONDON (Dispatches) -- A new study confirms that genes a person inherits directly are most likely to contribute to their achievements in education.
A child’s educational success depends on the genes that they haven’t inherited from their parents, as well as the genes they have, according to a study led by University College London researchers.
However, parent genes that aren’t directly inherited, yet have still shaped parents’ own education levels and subsequently influenced the lifestyle and family environment they provide for their children, are also important and can affect how well a person does at school and beyond.
Children take after their parents because of nature (the genes they inherit) and nurture (the environment they grow up in). But nature and nurture effects are intertwined.
Mothers and fathers each pass on half of their genes to their children, and although the other half of their genes are not passed on, they continue to influence the parents’ traits and ultimately influence the traits in their children. For example, parents with a higher genetic propensity for learning may have a greater interest in activities such as reading that, in turn, nurture learning in their offspring.
Researchers reviewed and analysed 12 studies in several countries and used a method called polygenic scoring to study the influence of millions of genetic variants on educational attainment in nearly 40,000 parent and child pairs.
The researchers found that genetic nurture had about half as much impact on education success as genetic inheritance.