
Genetic link between family SES and children's educational achievement - gwern
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v21/n3/full/mp20152a.html
======
gxs
I have always wondered what exactly is going on in society:

People in the US, more so than other countries, have a plausible chance of
going to college, even if it takes going in to massive debt.

Then, they will go on to find a mate who is likely also college educated, and
in a similar income bracket.

Over time, doesn't this mean that we're breeding (for lack of a better term) a
class of people who are a) capable of being educated and b) seek out
education? Doesn't this only widen the achievement gap?

Not proposing a solution, but I suspect if we were to take this stuff
seriously, we could make serious inroads to addressing inequality.

On the other hand, as a country we rightfully (IMO) believe everyone is equal
and work hard to provide opportunity for everyone.

What's the right move here?

~~~
caseysoftware
The Bell Curve (1994) talked about the intellectual stratification that is
happening in society. The author and resulting research was called "racist"
and has been shouted down time and time again but much of what you say is
discussed in the book. He shows correlation between intelligence and [income,
parent's socioeconomic status (SES), job security/unemployment, educational
attainment, and tons of other things]. The data is sporadic pre-WW2 but
complete and well-validated afterwards. He avoids drawing conclusions or
prescribing solutions.

All of it is interesting and some is compelling, but the book is generally
forbidden to be discussed in "polite" company.

 _The interesting thing about the book.. to reduce the "racist" attacks, the
author only looked at white people throughout the bulk of the book._

~~~
peteretep

        > the book is generally forbidden to be discussed in
        > "polite" company
    

The problem with studies like this - and also ones that for example attempt to
show race-linked differences in "positive factors" \- is that they're pretty
useless for anything other than the uneducated using as a blunt discrimination
tool.

Let's say you live in a society where there are blue and green people. A study
shows a genetic basis for a difference - on average across the whole
population - where blue people are 10% less intelligent and 10% more violent.

What's next? Are you justified in preferring to hire green people? No. Are you
justified in having greens-only policies? Of course not, that's not how
averages work. Is there any basis for any kind of segregation? Any basis for
any color-based policies? No.

But you can be sure that there will be green people trying to use these
studies to show themselves as superior, as a basis for discrimination, for
popularist politics, and all the other associated bullshit.

It's precisely because there's almost no practical use for studies like these,
but they are absolutely pounced upon by racists and opportunists, that they're
'generally forbidden to be discussed in "polite" company'.

~~~
wtbob
> A study shows a genetic basis for a difference - on average across the whole
> population - where blue people are 10% less intelligent and 10% more
> violent.

> Are you justified in preferring to hire green people? No.

Why the heck _wouldn 't_ you be justified in _preferring_ to hire people who
are, on average, more intelligent and less violent?

> Are you justified in having greens-only policies? Of course not, that's not
> how averages work.

I agree — in the scenario, any individual blue might be preferable to the
great mass of greens.

> Is there any basis for any kind of segregation? Any basis for any color-
> based policies? No … It's precisely because there's almost no practical use
> for studies like these

There's no practical use _that you care to put into practice_. What you're
arguing for is categories of 'forbidden knowledge': stuff that everyone agrees
to ignore, because its truth is too discomforting. That seems a bit childish
to me: one of the hallmarks of maturity is coming to terms with uncomfortable
knowledge.

Besides, here's one practical use for such a study: in your example, if blues
were a much higher proportion of the prison population than they are of
society at large, knowing that they are less intelligent and more violent on
average is information which can help one determine if that is fair or not.

~~~
peteretep

        > Why the heck wouldn't you be
        > justified in preferring to
        > hire people who are, on 
        > average, more intelligent
        > and less violent?
    

Because that knowledge tells you absolutely nothing about any given
individual.

~~~
wtbob
> Because that knowledge tells you absolutely nothing about any given
> individual.

You can't know the heart of any man: all you can do is make predictions about
how he will behave under various circumstances, based on the observations you
have made of his behaviour so far. To ignore an observation with strong
statistical power because you don't like it is simply unscientific.

~~~
peteretep

        > based on the observations
        > you have made of his 
        > behaviour so far
    

That's what interviews and resumes are for. I would be interested to know how
you would practically hire for race while not being hit by the halo effect for
one race on one hand, and not missing strong candidates through racism on the
other.

------
dschiptsov
No matter culture, parent's social status, school, personal circumstances, and
environment in general?

Let me guess - statistical correlation on a highly biased sample rushed to
print.

------
khirasaki
I'm having a hard time parsing this paper. The question I have is:

What percentage of family SES appears to be genetically correlated,
intelligence or otherwise?

~~~
gwern
j15t gives you the money quote of the results in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025219)

If you just want to know what percentage of variance in family SES is caused
by the measured SNP differences, this study puts it at ~20%. This isn't too
interesting since we already know that as most SNP GCTAs turn in results
similar to that and there are several other studies establishing SES SNP
heritability similar to that ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-
wide_complex_trait_anal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-
wide_complex_trait_analysis#Social.2Fbehavioral) ).

This heritability doesn't tell you _how_ the genetics is causing the
higher/lower SES, though. It might be because they are increasing intelligence
(most plausible); changing personality to more extroverted and Conscientious
(possible); or increasing height (possible); or changing preferences to more
rewarding fields like STEM (plausible given other results on subject area
interest being genetically influenced); or maybe because they are yielding
blue eyes/blond hair (highly unlikely). In this case, the researchers look at
intelligence, since that is a trait closely linked to SES and also highly
genetic.

So what you do is do the GCTA on both SES and intelligence, getting the usual
0.2-0.3 heritability estimates, then you look for overlap. This paper is
interesting because it finds a great deal of overlap, indeed, almost total
overlap - so you can interpret this as showing that at least part of SES is
heritable and passed on in families, not because rich families are better at
finding summer jobs for their kids or they leave their kids fortunes in their
wills or live in better neighborhoods, but because they give their kids more
intelligence genes and intelligence is important for success in modern
society.

------
pauldw
I am excited for the discovery of the specific causes behind this general
effect. Especially if some specific interventions are possible.

------
lamarkia
It is annoying how such studies presume that genetics are a factor in academic
achievement.

They can be evidence that social mobility is not happening and that academic
achievement requires a certain attitude by the parents and their social class.

~~~
j15t
I don't see how this study is 'presuming' anything. The results section quite
early explores the creation between genetic and non-genetic factors:

> To test whether intelligence mediates the observed association between
> family SES and children’s educational achievement, we statistically
> controlled for intelligence by regressing GCSE on intelligence and entering
> the resulting standardized residuals into the bivariate GCTA model with
> family SES. When controlling for variance explained by children’s
> intelligence, which yielded a univariate GCTA estimate of 0.38 (0.11 s.e.)
> (data not shown), the phenotypic correlation between family SES and
> children’s educational achievement was reduced from 0.50 to 0.37 (0.02
> s.e.). The GCTA estimate of the genetic covariation between family SES and
> children’s educational achievement dropped from 0.25 (0.09 s.e.) to 0.17
> (0.09 s.e.). Mirroring the mediation observed at the phenotypic level, this
> suggests that one-third of the SNPs tagging variation in family SES and
> children’s educational achievement also captured individual differences in
> intelligence, implying two-thirds of the SNPs linking family SES and
> children’s educational achievement were independent of intelligence.

The heritability of IQ and it's effect on SES is well document, but it
obviously isn't the only relevant factor. I don't believe equality of outcome
is feasible in this regard.

------
Snargorf
My old hypothesis is that in a reasonably free society, families reach their
"destination" socioeconomic status after 3 generations.

Even if they immigrate as refugees on rusty boats, or lose everything in a
holocaust or internment camps. Or, even if they win the lottery. After three
generations, they hit their level, whether it's at the bottom or the top. And
then they stay there.

It's IQ, an absence of stimulation-seeking behavior, a long mental time
horizon, and a non-susceptibility to addictive chemicals or behaviors, and an
absence of costly mental and physical diseases. It's genetic.

~~~
sowhatquestion
Correct me if I'm misreading, but I have a hard time seeing how the study
supports your hypothesis. In the "Discussion" section, the authors state that
their heritability estimate for educational attainment was 31%, and only 20%
for SES. That still leaves the door open for significant social influence.

The authors summarize: "Our findings add weight to the view that genetic
variation plays an important, but not exclusive, role in educational
inequalities and social mobility, which is at variance with views, that still
prevail in some quarters, that these are solely the product of social forces
and environmental inequalities." In other words, they only take themselves to
have refuted the strawman view that observed differences "are solely the
product of social forces."

~~~
cameldrv
Worth reading: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/16/non-shared-
environment-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/16/non-shared-environment-
doesnt-just-mean-schools-and-peers/)

He makes a lot of points here, but the most important IMO is that many
measurements are noisy, and the correlation between X and Y+noise is less than
the correlation between X and Y.

