Predicting educational achievement from DNA

Abstract

A genome-wide polygenic score (GPS), derived from a 2013 genome-wide association study (N=127,000), explained 2% of the variance in total years of education (EduYears). In a follow-up study (N=329,000), a new EduYears GPS explains up to 4%. Here, we tested the association between this latest EduYears GPS and educational achievement scores at ages 7, 12 and 16 in an independent sample of 5825 UK individuals. We found that EduYears GPS explained greater amounts of variance in educational achievement over time, up to 9% at age 16, accounting for 15% of the heritable variance. This is the strongest GPS prediction to date for quantitative behavioral traits. Individuals in the highest and lowest GPS septiles differed by a whole school grade at age 16. Furthermore, EduYears GPS was associated with general cognitive ability (~3.5%) and family socioeconomic status (~7%). There was no evidence of an interaction between EduYears GPS and family socioeconomic status on educational achievement or on general cognitive ability. These results are a harbinger of future widespread use of GPS to predict genetic risk and resilience in the social and behavioral sciences.

Figure 1

Variance explained (R²) and standard error of EduYears GPS predicting: EA 7=educational achievement age 7; EA 12=educational achievement age 12; EA 16=educational achievement age 16; g=general cognitive ability; SES=family socioeconomic status; in this analysis and all subsequent analyses, the unique ‘best-fit' GPS was used for each respective trait; see the Materials and methods section for details. GPS, genome-wide polygenic score.

Figure 2

Standardized means and standard errors for educational achievement at age 7, 12 and 16 by genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) septile. EduYears GPS was rescored as septiles (1=lowest, 7=highest).

Figure 3

(a) Standardized educational achievement mean scores at age 16 by EduYears GPS and family SES for individuals scoring in the highest and lowest 20% of the distribution of EduYears GPS. There was no evidence for an interaction effect (F(1,605)=1.29, P=0.18); (b) general cognitive ability mean scores by EduYears GPS and family SES for individuals scoring in the highest and lowest 20% of the distribution of EduYears GPS. No interaction effect was found (F(1,327)=1.06, P=0.30). GPS, genome-wide polygenic score; SES, socioeconomic status.