Social and Genetic Effects on Educational Performance in Early Adolescence

Research into the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage has long been criticized for not paying sufficient attention to genetics. This study is based on the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and administrative register data on 25000 genotyped Norwegian children and their parents. We assess and disentangle the relative importance of genetics and social background for children’s standardized academic test scores. Norway offers a particularly interesting context for intergenerational transmission, as the welfare state and educational system is designed to provide equal opportunity structures for children. The results point to genetics only confounding the parent status-offspring achievement relationship to a small degree, to ‘genetic nurture’ effects being small, and pro-vide no evidence of neither Scarr-Rowe interactions in test scores nor parent-child genotype interactions. Even in a universal welfare state with relatively low levels of inequality, there are two systems of ascription, one genetic and one social, and these are largely independent of each other. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.