The Genetics of Educational Attainment

There is a paper from almost two years ago in Nature which identifies SNPs associated with educational attainment. This is becoming more possible as genetic information from commercial DNA firms such as 23andMe or Ancestry.com become available for researchers, giving them a huge number of samples to work from.  In this case an original N of 1.1million was whittled down to about 300K to look at Educational Attainment. If you want to see the information explained in their FAQs, click the second left-sidebar link in the FAQ section here.

Some of you will be more interested in what they have to say there than anything I will put in, and that's fine.

Researchers like things that are easier to define and measure.  When studying humans physical scientists, especially geneticists like track-and-field numbers rather than fuzzier concepts of athletic ability. They like height, because it is a number that stands still, and IQ because it is one number that is stable over time that is at least closely related to intelligence. Other body measurements can also be used.  IQ subtests can also be used.  You can make things more complicated as you go along.  But starting from something solid is nice.

While Educational Attainment is not absolutely solid (What do you call two years of trade school?  What about a GED plus some college courses? Shouldn't dropping out of an Ivy count for more than from a community college?) it's pretty darn close. You count up the years and put them in the blank. You might think that EA is a bit fuzzy, because it is dependent on things other than your abilities.  There is a strong cultural aspect of what your family expects.  There are international differences, and differences of opportunity. Everyone recognises that even more than IQ, the number can mislead. In the discussion of the study, the wry comment was made that EA correlates with intelligence, but also measures your ability to sit and look interested while a professor drones on and on, and perhaps we should study people's butt phenotypes as well. More seriously, the lead researcher noted in an interview that the ability to pay attention for long periods is also being measured, and those who can't do that as well score lower on EA.

Educational Attainment does correlate with several important life outcomes, sometimes better than IQ, so it's a useful thing to know about groups, even if it can be misleading about any particular individual.  But it's biggest advantage is that you can get that EA number about so many people.  We fill out years of schooling on forms all the time, including places that it makes no difference. So also with height and weight. So when DNA companies ask you that along with a dozen other things, researchers can now get a million people to study, which is otherwise impossible. The Chinese collect lots of data on their people, and will in the near future be able to field studies with N's in the hundreds of millions. In contrast, very few people have been given a formal IQ test, and even though the SAT and ACT are good proxies for that number and millions of people have taken those, no one routinely asks you to put your SAT numbers on a form you are filling out.

This is going long, and I have a long way to go.  Consider it Part I.