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Marks GN. Has Cognitive Ability Become More Important for Education and the Labor Market? A Comparison of the Project Talent and 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Cohorts. J Intell 2023; 11:169. [PMID: 37623552 PMCID: PMC10455275 DOI: 10.3390/jintelligence11080169] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2023] [Revised: 08/17/2023] [Accepted: 08/18/2023] [Indexed: 08/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Modernization and meritocratic theories contend that with modernization, socioeconomic background (SES) becomes less important for educational and socioeconomic attainments, while cognitive ability becomes more important. However, the evidence is mixed. This study investigates if the effects of SES and cognitive ability on educational and labor market outcomes have changed in the US by comparing two longitudinal cohort studies: the 1960 Project Talent and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. For all outcomes-grades-at-school, educational and occupational attainment, and income-cognitive ability clearly has stronger effects than a composite and broad measure of SES. The effects of cognitive ability for grades-at-school and income are notably stronger in the more recent cohort, whereas its effects on educational and occupational attainment are similar. SES effects, net of ability, for educational and occupational attainment are only moderate and for school grades and income are very small (β < 0.10). However, for each outcome SES effects are stronger in the more recent NLSY79 cohort. This is attributed to ability being a stronger influence on the educational and socioeconomic attainments of NLSY79 parents compared to Project Talent parents. These analyses suggest that in the US, cognitive ability has long been an important, and SES a much weaker, influence on educational and subsequent socioeconomic outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gary Neil Marks
- Department of Sociology, Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
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Ropponen A, Narusyte J, Wang M, Silventoinen K, Böckerman P, Svedberg P. Genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in sustainable working life-A Swedish twin cohort study. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0289074. [PMID: 37498854 PMCID: PMC10374081 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289074] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2022] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 07/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Although genetics is known to have a role in sickness absences (SA), disability pensions (DP) and in their mutual associations, the empirical knowledge is scarce on not having these interruptions, i.e., sustainable working life. Hence, we aimed to investigate how genetic and environmental factors affect individual variation in sustainable working life in short-term (two consecutive years) and in long-term (22 years of follow-up) using the classical twin modeling based on different genetic relatedness of mono- and dizygotic twins. The final sample (n = 51 071) included Swedish same-sex twins with known zygosity born between 1930 and 1990 (53% women) with complete national register data of employment, SA, DP, unemployment, old-age pension, emigration, and death. For the short-term sustainable working life, genetic factors explained 36% (95% confidence intervals (CI) 31-41%), environmental factors shared by co-twins such as family background 8% (95% CI 5-14%) and environmental factors unique to each twin individual 56% (95% CI 56-56%) on the individual differences. For the long-term sustainable working life, the largest proportions on individual differences were explained by environmental factors shared by co-twins (46%, 95% CI 44-48%) and unique to each twin individual (37% 95% CI 36-38%) whereas a small proportion was explained by genetic factors (18%, 95%CI 14-22%). To conclude, short-term sustainable working life was explained to a large extent by unique environment and to lesser extent by genetic factors whereas long-term (22 years) sustainable working life had both moderate unique and common environmental effect, and to lower extent genetic effects contributing to individual differences. These findings suggest that sustainable working life have different short- and long-term predictors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annina Ropponen
- Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
- Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Jurgita Narusyte
- Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Mo Wang
- Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Karri Silventoinen
- Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
- Population Research Unit, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Petri Böckerman
- School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE, Helsinki, Finland
- IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany
| | - Pia Svedberg
- Division of Insurance Medicine, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
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Cermakova P, Chlapečka A, Csajbók Z, Andrýsková L, Brázdil M, Marečková K. Parental education, cognition and functional connectivity of the salience network. Sci Rep 2023; 13:2761. [PMID: 36797291 PMCID: PMC9935859 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-29508-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2022] [Accepted: 02/06/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2023] Open
Abstract
The aim was to investigate the association of parental education at birth with cognitive ability in childhood and young adulthood and determine, whether functional connectivity of the salience network underlies this association. We studied participants of the Czech arm of the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood who underwent assessment of their cognitive ability at age 8 (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) and 28/29 years (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) and measurement with resting state functional MRI at age 23/24. We estimated the associations of parental education with cognitive ability and functional connectivity between the seeds in the salience network and other voxels in the brain. We found that lower education of both mothers and fathers was associated with lower verbal IQ, performance IQ and full-scale IQ of the offspring at age 8. Only mother´s education was associated with performance IQ at age 28/29. Lower mother´s education correlated with greater functional connectivity between the right rostral prefrontal cortex and a cluster of voxels in the occipital cortex, which, in turn, was associated with lower performance IQ at age 28/29. We conclude that the impact of parental education, particularly father´s, on offspring´s cognitive ability weakens during the lifecourse. Functional connectivity between the right rostral prefrontal cortex and occipital cortex may be a biomarker underlying the transmission of mother´s education on performance IQ of their offspring.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pavla Cermakova
- Second Faculty of Medicine, Charles University Prague, 150 06, Prague 5, Czech Republic. .,National Institute of Mental Health, 250 67, Klecany, Czech Republic.
| | - Adam Chlapečka
- grid.4491.80000 0004 1937 116XThird Faculty of Medicine, Charles University Prague, 100 00 Prague 10, Czech Republic ,grid.4491.80000 0004 1937 116XCentre of Clinical Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, First Faculty of Medicine, General University Hospital, Charles University in Prague, 128 21 Prague 2, Czech Republic
| | - Zsófia Csajbók
- grid.4491.80000 0004 1937 116XFaculty of Humanities, Charles University Prague, 182 00 Prague 8, Czech Republic
| | - Lenka Andrýsková
- grid.10267.320000 0001 2194 0956RECETOX, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Milan Brázdil
- grid.10267.320000 0001 2194 0956Brain and Mind Research, Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Klára Marečková
- grid.10267.320000 0001 2194 0956Brain and Mind Research, Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
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Marks GN. Cognitive ability has powerful, widespread and robust effects on social stratification: Evidence from the 1979 and 1997 US National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. INTELLIGENCE 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2022.101686] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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O'Keefe P, Rodgers JL. A Simulation Study of Bootstrap Approaches to Estimate Confidence Intervals in DeFries-Fulker Regression Models (with Application to the Heritability of BMI Changes in the NLSY). Behav Genet 2020; 50:127-138. [PMID: 32040643 DOI: 10.1007/s10519-020-09993-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/13/2019] [Accepted: 01/28/2020] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
Abstract
The univariate bootstrap is a relatively recently developed version of the bootstrap (Lee and Rodgers in Psychol Methods 3(1): 91, 1998). DeFries-Fulker (DF) analysis is a regression model used to estimate parameters in behavioral genetic models (DeFries and Fulker in Behav Genet 15(5): 467-473, 1985). It is appealing for its simplicity; however, it violates certain regression assumptions such as homogeneity of variance and independence of errors that make calculation of standard errors and confidence intervals problematic. Methods have been developed to account for these issues (Kohler and Rodgers in Behav Genet 31(2): 179-191, 2001), however the univariate bootstrap represents a unique means of doing so that is presaged by suggestions from previous DF research (e.g., Cherny et al. in Behav Genet 22(2): 153-162, 1992). In the present study we use simulations to examine the performance of the univariate bootstrap in the context of DF analysis. We compare a number of possible bootstrap schemes as well as more traditional confidence interval methods. We follow up with an empirical demonstration, applying results of the simulation to models estimated to investigate changes in body mass index in adults from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick O'Keefe
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
| | - Joseph Lee Rodgers
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
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