Tag Archives | Twin Studies

The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample

Tina Baier, Volker Lang

Sociological Science, February 20, 2019
10.15195/v6.a6


The relative importance of genes and shared environmental influences on stratification outcomes has recently received much attention in the literature. We focus on education and the gene-environmental interplay. Specifically, we investigate whether—as proposed by the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis—genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. We argue that the social stratification of family environments affects children’s chances to actualize their genetic potential. We hypothesize that advantaged families provide more child-specific inputs, which enhance genetic expression, whereas the rearing environments of children in disadvantaged families are less adapted to children’s individual abilities, leading to a suppression of genetic potential. We test this relationship in Germany, which represents an interesting case due to its highly selective schooling system characterized by early tracking and the broad coverage of part-time schools. We use novel data from the TwinLife panel, a population-register–based sample of twins and their families. Results of ACE-variance decompositions support the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis: Shared environmental influences on education matter only in disadvantaged families, whereas genetic influences are more important in advantaged families. Our findings support the growing literature on the importance of the gene-environmental interplay and emphasize the role of the family environment as a trigger of differential genetic expression.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tina Baier: Department Educational Decisions and Processes, Migration, Returns to Education, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories
E-mail: tina.baier@lifbi.de

Volker Lang: Department of Sociology, Bielefeld University
E-mail: volker.lang@uni-bielefeld.de

Acknowledgements: This article was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (awarded to Martin Diewald [DI 759/11-1], Rainer Riemann [RI 595/8-1], and Frank M. Spinath [SP 610/6-1]) and the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR) internship grant. We received excellent comments from participants in the ECSR conference in Milan in August 2017, the “Reading Group” held at the University of Oxford in November 2017, and the “Social Inequality and Social Demography” colloquium held at Humboldt University of Berlin in January 2018. We also would like to thank especially Martin Diewald, Anette Fasang, and the editors for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article.

  • Citation: Baier, Tina, and Volker Lang. 2019. “The Social Stratification of Environmental and Genetic Influences on Education: New Evidence Using a Register-Based Twin Sample.” Sociological Science 6: 143-171.
  • Received: September 25, 2018
  • Accepted: December 31, 2018
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a6


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