de Zeeuw Eveline L, Kan Kees-Jan, van Beijsterveldt Catharina E M, Mbarek Hamdi, Hottenga Jouke-Jan, Davies Gareth E, Neale Michael C, Dolan Conor V, Boomsma Dorret I
1Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
2Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, VUmc, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2019 Sep 3;4:13. doi: 10.1038/s41539-019-0052-2. eCollection 2019.
Parental socioeconomic status (SES) is a strong predictor of children's educational achievement (EA), with an increasing effect throughout development. Inequality in educational outcomes between children from different SES backgrounds exists in all Western countries. It has been proposed that a cause of this inequality lies in the interplay between genetic effects and SES on EA, which might depend on society and the equality of the education system. This study adopted two approaches, a classical twin design and polygenic score (PGS) approach, to address the effect of parental SES on EA in a large sample of 12-year-old Dutch twin pairs (2479 MZ and 4450 DZ twin pairs with PGSs for educational attainment available in 2335 children) from the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR). The findings of this study indicated that average EA increased with increasing parental SES. The difference in EA between boys and girls became smaller in the higher SES groups. The classical twin design analyses based on genetic covariance structure modeling pointed to lower genetic, environmental, and thus phenotypic variation in EA at higher SES. Independent from a child's PGS, parental SES predicted EA. However, the strength of the association between PGS and EA did not depend on parental SES. In a within-family design, the twin with a higher PGS scored higher on EA than the co-twin, demonstrating that the effect of the PGS on EA was at least partly independent from parental SES. To conclude, EA depended on SES both directly and indirectly, and SES moderated the additive genetic and environmental components of EA. Adding information from PGS, in addition to parental SES, improved the prediction of children's EA.
父母的社会经济地位（SES）是儿童教育成就（EA）的有力预测指标，且在整个发育过程中的影响不断增加。所有西方国家都存在来自不同社会经济背景的儿童在教育成果上的不平等现象。有人提出，这种不平等的一个原因在于基因效应和社会经济地位对教育成就的相互作用，这可能取决于社会和教育系统的平等程度。本研究采用了两种方法，即经典双胞胎设计和多基因分数（PGS）方法，以探讨父母社会经济地位对来自荷兰双胞胎登记处（NTR）的大量12岁荷兰双胞胎对（2479对同卵双胞胎和4450对异卵双胞胎，2335名儿童有教育成就的多基因分数）的教育成就的影响。本研究结果表明，平均教育成就随着父母社会经济地位的提高而增加。在社会经济地位较高的群体中，男孩和女孩在教育成就上的差异变小。基于遗传协方差结构建模的经典双胞胎设计分析表明，在社会经济地位较高时，教育成就的遗传、环境以及表型变异较低。独立于儿童的多基因分数，父母的社会经济地位可预测教育成就。然而，多基因分数与教育成就之间关联的强度并不取决于父母的社会经济地位。在家庭内部设计中，多基因分数较高的双胞胎在教育成就上的得分高于其同胞双胞胎，这表明多基因分数对教育成就的影响至少部分独立于父母的社会经济地位。总之，教育成就直接和间接地依赖于社会经济地位，并且社会经济地位调节了教育成就的加性遗传和环境成分。除了父母的社会经济地位外，加入多基因分数的信息可改善对儿童教育成就的预测。
