Elsevier

Intelligence

Volume 90, January–February 2022, 101597
Intelligence

Change and stability in the association of parents' education with children's intelligence

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2021.101597Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Data came from 5 British population cohort studies born between 1946 and 2000.

  • Parents' education predicted children's IQ differences across generations.

  • The influence of mothers' education has gained strength since 1946.

  • In recent generations, mothers' and fathers' education equally influence children's IQ.

  • Assortative mating has slightly declined across generations.

Abstract

Parents' educational attainment is one of the strongest predictors of children's cognitive development, which in turn exerts a pivotal influence on children's educational outcomes. However, no prior study has explored change and stability in the relative association of mothers' and fathers' education with children's intelligence (IQ) that may occur across generations. Here, we identified 5 population cohort studies with children born in 1946, 1958, 1970, 1994–1996, and 2000-2002 that were representative of the UK's population at their inception, and that assessed parents' educational attainment and children's IQ (total N in analyses = 48,175). Associations of mothers' and fathers' education with children's IQ ranged from r = 0.38 (CI 95% 0.36–0.41) to r = 0.19 (CI 95% 0.17–0.20) across generations. Fathers' education was more strongly related to children's IQ in the earlier cohorts but in later years, mothers' education emerged as more dominant. However, these differences in the strength of the associations were small and might be chance findings. Negative interactions between mothers' and fathers' education in the prediction of children's intelligence that may reflect compensatory effects were observed in all cohorts, but only reached significance before 1970. We conclude that parents' educational attainment has been continuously associated with children's intelligence across generations with medium to large effect sizes. While our results are based on analyses of large population cohort studies that span across six decades, the limitations of the data and study design warrant a cautious interpretation of our findings.

Preregistration & data: https://osf.io/ep3jz/

Introduction

Individual differences in childhood intelligence (IQ) have pervasive, long-term influence on a broad range of important life outcomes, including academic achievement (Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes, 2007), educational attainment (Strenze, 2007), occupational success (Schmidt & Hunter, 2004), health (Carter, Richards, Hotopf, & Hatch, 2019), and well-being (Backhouse, McHutchison, Cvoro, Shenkin, & Wardlaw, 2018). One of the strongest predictors of children's IQ differences is parents' educational attainment (Duncan & Magnuson, 2012; Hernandez & Napierala, 2014; Reardon, 2011). A large-scale analysis of data from seven countries even found that parents' education was more strongly associated with children's IQ differences than the family's household wealth (Rindermann & Ceci, 2018). However, the stability of the association between parents' education and children's IQ across generations has not been empirically tested before.

Section snippets

Why is parents' education associated with children's IQ?

The relation between parents' education and children's intelligence is due to both the inherited genetic traits passed from parent to child (i.e., nature) and the environment that parents create to raise their children in (i.e., nurture; von Stumm et al., 2020). Disentangling the causal influences of nature and nurture on childhood IQ is difficult, because parents select and create a plethora of environments for their children, which correlate with their own genotypes (Avinun, 2020; Selzam et

Comparing the association of mothers' and fathers' education with children's IQ

Although the importance of both parents' education for children's outcomes has been recognized in the scientific literature, greater attention has been traditionally paid to the role of mothers' education for children's IQ. Mothers often act as the primary caregivers and spend a greater proportion of time with their children relative to fathers (Harding, 2015; Mercy & Steelman, 1982). As a result, they are thought to exert much influence on children's rearing environment (Passareli-Carrazzoni,

Historical context of education in the UK

In Britain and elsewhere, education access and attainment levels have changed dramatically over the past decades. With the Education Act of 1944, education at the secondary school level from age 11 to 15 years became state-funded and compulsory for all children (Education Act, 1944). Prior to this, education beyond primary level (i.e., age 5 to 11 years) was only available to more affluent families and typically reserved for boys. In 1988, the Education Reform Act introduced the national

The current study

We utilised data from five UK cohort studies whose populations were born from 1946 through 2001 to compare the association of mothers' and fathers' education with early childhood intelligence across generations born over 55 years. A detailed description of the UK cohorts can be found in the Supporting Information (SI). Our study aims were twofold. First, we examined the association of parents' education with children's IQ in generations born from 1946 to 2001. Second, we compared the

Sample

We defined five criteria for cohorts to be included in our analyses, including (a) sampling a population greater than N = 1000 that (b) was representative of the UK population at the cohort's inception, (c) was born within a set year or decade, (d) conducted a reliable and valid assessment of IQ during early childhood (aged 5 to 8 years), and (e) collected at least one measure of mothers' and fathers' education before or contemporaneously with the child's assessment of intelligence.

We

Parents' education and children's IQ across time

Parents' education was most strongly associated with children's intelligence in the NSHD cohort from 1946, with a correlation of 0.41 [CI 95% 0.38 to 0.43]. In later cohorts, the association decreased and stabilised around the 0.25 mark, specifically at 0.21 [CI 95% 0.20 to 0.23] in the 1970 BCS cohort, 0.28 [CI 95% 0.25 to 0.30] in the TEDS cohort of 1994–1996, and 0.24 [CI 95% 0.22 to 0.26] in MCS born from 2000-2002 (Table 1). Fig. 1 illustrates change and stability in the association over

Discussion

Parental education is one of the strongest predictors of children's intelligence (e.g., Rindermann & Ceci, 2018). Here, we explored the association of parents' education with children's IQ across five generations born between 1946 and 2001. We observed medium to large associations between parents' education and children's IQ. Parents' education was most strongly associated with children's IQ in 1946; after that, the association reduced and stabilised at about 0.25 from 1970 onwards. We also

Conclusions

Parents' education was positively associated with children's IQ across generations born over 55 years. Yet, the effect sizes of this association changed over time: The strength of the relation between parents' education and children's IQ halved from 1946 to 2002. Fathers' education better predicted children's IQ in early cohorts, but in recent years the association with mothers' education has gained in strength. Likewise in earlier generations, the higher educated parent was likely to

Acknowledgements

We thank all participants for their contributions to the respective cohort studies. This work was supported by grants to Sophie von Stumm from the Nuffield Foundation (EDO/44110) and the Jacobs Foundation.

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