Could your DNA reveal your Educational Attainment?

Are your genes nudging you to stay in school?

Whether you like school or not, your level of education is a critical factor influencing the social and economic aspects of your life, and even your health. Perhaps unsurprisingly, educational attainment has been previously shown to be moderately heritable, meaning that if you have educated parents, you are more likely to be better educated, too.

Given the astronomical expenses of tertiary education in the United States and many other countries, your level of education cannot be disentangled from your socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, like Cognitive Ability, certain genetic factors may be giving some people a competitive edge over others.

In a series of genome-wide association studies involving data from over one million people, investigators found more than 1000 gene loci associated with a person's educational attainment, which was measured in the number of years the person has been in school. The newly identified gene loci in this study were related to neuron-to-neuron communication, which is how brain cells receive and send signals to each other). In addition to this, the investigators also constructed polygenic scores (based on these loci) that explain 11-13% of the differences in educational attainment in the sample. Learn more about the study here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30038396

To what extent are your genes nudging you to stay in school? Learn more about your educational attainment on Genomelink!