Educational achievement is highly heritable across school years and subjects, with twin heritability around 60% and SNP heritability around 30%¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r3 · q2–q3
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Twin ACE analyses show additive genetic factors explain about 60% of variance in achievement measures, with shared and non-shared environment each explaining about 20%. → Rimfeld 2018 q3 i? SNP heritability of achievement is substantial (~30%), about half the twin estimate. → Rimfeld 2018 (2)

Evidence¶

Rimfeld 2018¶

Rimfeld, K., Malanchini, M., Krapohl, E., Hannigan, L. J., Dale, P. S. & Plomin, R. (2018). The stability of educational achievement across school years is largely explained by genetic factors. npj Science of Learning 3:16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-018-0030-0

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Univariate twin model-fitting (ACE) on achievement measures from age 7 to 16 in the TEDS sample, reported in Results; estimates did not vary systematically across subjects or school years, and "All achievement measures show substantial heritability (A ~60%)." These are variance components; no standardised effect size is printed.

"All achievement measures show substantial heritability (A ~60%). Shared (C) and non-shared (E) environmental factors both explained about 20% of the variance."

Rimfeld 2018 (2)¶

Rimfeld, K., Malanchini, M., Krapohl, E., Hannigan, L. J., Dale, P. S. & Plomin, R. (2018). The stability of educational achievement across school years is largely explained by genetic factors. npj Science of Learning 3:16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-018-0030-0

q2 · i? · associational · r3

GCTA SNP-heritability analysis of the same achievement measures in the TEDS genotyped subsample; the article reports estimates were "substantial (~30%)" and about half as large as twin estimates. This is a variance component, not a printed effect size.

"Figure 1b shows that SNP heritabilities were substantial (~30%) but, as expected, only about half as large as the twin estimates"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• GPAΔ is strikingly highly heritable (85%), exceeding the heritability of achievement itself (67%) — related
• Adjusting published twin-study ACE estimates for assortative mating raises mean heritability by about 17 points and lowers shared environmental estimates by about 16 points — related
• A Classical Twin Design model of educational attainment in the TwinLife sample estimates shared environmental influence at 43% and additive genetic influence at 34% — related
• Educational achievement is highly heritable, and the common environmental variance is attributable to SES effects — related
• The best-fitting NTFD model estimates heritability of educational attainment at 51% and total shared environmental influence at 26%, disaggregated into twin-specific (16%) and sibling-shared (10%) components — related
• Reading fluency, spelling, phonemic awareness, listening comprehension and non-word repetition are moderately heritable (SNP-h2 30–50%) in unrelated youth — related
• The general Spatial Ability factor is 84% heritable, with shared genetic variance underlying clustering across all sixteen tests and no meaningful shared environmental contribution — related
• Twin-specific shared environments account for a substantial portion of CTD shared-environment estimates for educational attainment and cannot be interpreted as between-family environmental differences — related
• Polygenic score predictive power for educational attainment increases with discovery sample size and is projected to approach the SNP heritability bound — related
• Age-to-age change in achievement is largely explained by non-shared environmental factors, while genetic and shared environmental influences are stable — related