Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2022 Dec 12;17(12):e0267254. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267254. eCollection 2022.
Numerous studies have documented a strong intergenerational transmission of educational attainment. In explaining this transmission, separate fields of research have studied separate mechanisms. To obtain a more complete understanding, the current study integrates insights from the fields of behavioural sciences and genetics and examines the extent to which paternal involvement and children's polygenic score (PGS) are unique underlying mechanisms, correlate with each other, and/or act as important confounders in the intergenerational transmission of fathers' educational attainment. To answer our research questions, we use rich data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 4,579). Firstly, results from our mediation analyses showed a significant association between fathers' educational attainment and children's educational attainment (0.303). This association is for about 4 per cent accounted for by paternal involvement, whereas a much larger share, 21 per cent, is accounted for by children's education PGS. Secondly, our results showed that these genetic and behavioural factors are significantly correlated with each other (correlations between 0.06 and 0.09). Thirdly, we found support for genetic confounding, as adding children's education PGS to the model reduced the association between paternal involvement and children's educational attainment by 11 per cent. Fourthly, evidence for social confounding was almost negligible (the association between child's education PGS and educational attainment was only reduced by half of a per cent). Our findings highlight the importance of integrating insights and data from multiple disciplines in understanding the mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of inequality, as our study reveals that behavioural and genetic influences overlap, correlate, and confound each other as mechanisms underlying this transmission.
大量研究记录了教育程度在代际间的强传递性。在解释这种传递时，不同的研究领域分别研究了不同的机制。为了获得更全面的理解，本研究整合了行为科学和遗传学领域的见解，考察了父亲参与度和孩子的多基因评分（PGS）作为潜在机制的独特性、它们之间的相关性，以及/或者在父亲教育程度的代际传递中作为重要混杂因素的程度。为了回答我们的研究问题，我们使用了来自青少年到成人健康纵向研究（n=4579）的丰富数据。首先，我们的中介分析结果显示，父亲的教育程度与孩子的教育程度之间存在显著关联（0.303）。这种关联有大约 4%可以归因于父亲的参与度，而更大的比例，21%，可以归因于孩子的教育 PGS。其次，我们的结果表明，这些遗传和行为因素彼此之间存在显著的相关性（相关性在 0.06 到 0.09 之间）。第三，我们发现遗传因素的混杂作用得到了支持，因为在模型中加入孩子的教育 PGS 可以使父亲的参与度与孩子的教育程度之间的关联降低 11%。第四，社会因素的混杂作用几乎可以忽略不计（孩子的教育 PGS 与教育程度之间的关联仅降低了一半）。我们的研究结果强调了整合多个学科的见解和数据对于理解不平等代际传递背后机制的重要性，因为我们的研究表明，行为和遗传影响相互重叠、相关，并相互干扰，作为这种传递的机制。
