Delayed tracking and inequality of opportunity: Gene-environment interactions in educational attainment

Intergenerational transmission of health inequalities: towards a life course approach to socioeconomic inequalities in health - a review

Adult health inequalities are a persistent public health problem. Explanations are usually sought in behaviours and environments in adulthood, despite evidence on the importance of early life conditions for life course outcomes. We review evidence from a broad range of fields to unravel to what extent, and how, socioeconomic health inequalities are intergenerationally transmitted.We find that transmission of socioeconomic and associated health (dis)advantages from parents to offspring, and its underlying structural determinants, contributes substantially to socioeconomic inequalities in adult health. In the first two decades of life-from conception to early adulthood-parental socioeconomic position (SEP) and parental health strongly influence offspring adult SEP and health. Socioeconomic and health (dis)advantages are largely transmitted through the same broad mechanisms. Socioeconomic inequalities in the fetal environment contribute to inequalities in fetal development and birth outcomes, with lifelong socioeconomic and health consequences. Inequalities in the postnatal environment-especially the psychosocial and learning environment, physical exposures and socialisation-result in inequalities in child and adolescent health, development and behavioural habits, with health and socioeconomic consequences tracking into adulthood. Structural factors shape these mechanisms in a socioeconomically patterned and time-specific and place-specific way, leading to distinct birth-cohort patterns in health inequality.Adult health inequalities are for an important part intergenerationally transmitted. Effective health inequality reduction requires addressing intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage by creating societal circumstances that allow all children to develop to their full potential.

Differences in polygenic associations with educational attainment between West and East Germany before and after reunification

Here we examine geographical and historical differences in polygenic associations with educational attainment in East and West Germany around reunification. We test this in n = 1902 25-85-year-olds from the German SOEP-G[ene] cohort. We leverage a DNA-based measure of genetic influence, a polygenic index calculated based on a previous genome-wide association study of educational attainment in individuals living in democratic countries. We find that polygenic associations with educational attainment were significantly stronger among East, but not West, Germans after but not before reunification. Negative control analyses of a polygenic index of height with educational attainment and height indicate that this gene-by-environemt interaction is specific to the educational domain. These findings suggest that the shift from an East German state-socialist to a free-market West German system increased the importance of genetic variants previously identified as important for education.

Gene-environment interaction analysis of school quality and educational inequality

We study to what extent schools increase or decrease environmental and genetic influences on educational performance. Building on behavioral genetics literature on gene-environment interactions and sociological literature on the compensating and amplifying effects of schools on inequality, we investigate whether the role of genes and the shared environment is larger or smaller in higher-quality school environments. We apply twin models to Dutch administrative data on the educational performance of 18,384 same-sex and 11,050 opposite-sex twin pairs, enriched with data on the quality of primary schools. Our results show that school quality does not moderate genetic and shared-environmental influences on educational performance once the moderation by SES is considered. We find a gene-environment interplay for school SES: genetic variance decreases with increasing school SES. This school SES effect partly reflects parental SES influences. Yet, parental SES does not account for all the school SES moderation, suggesting that school-based processes play a role too.

Does students' awareness of school-track-related stereotypes exacerbate inequalities in education?

Early ability tracking increases inequalities in education. It has been proposed that the awareness of negative school-track-related stereotypes contributes to educational inequalities, as stereotype awareness interferes with students' abilities to thrive, particularly those in lower, stigmatized tracks. The present study tested this assumption in a sample of 3880 German secondary school students from three tracks, who were assessed four times on stereotype awareness regarding their own school track and academic outcomes (achievement, engagement, self-concept) between Grades 5 and 8. Students in the lowest track reported higher levels of stereotype awareness than higher track students or students attending a combined track. Stereotype awareness increased across time in all tracks. Contrary to our preregistered hypotheses, however, the results from multigroup models revealed that (changes in) stereotype awareness were not more strongly related to (changes in) most outcomes in the lowest track in comparison with the other two tracks.