Polygenic scores have become the workhorse for empirical analyses in social-science genetics. Because a polygenic score is constructed using the results of finite-sample Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWASs), it is a noisy approximation of the true latent genetic predisposition to a certain trait. The conventional way of boosting the predictive power of polygenic scores is to … Read more
Stop Meta-Analyzing, Start Instrumenting: Maximizing the Predictive Power of Polygenic Scores
Measuring educational inequality of opportunity: pupil’s effort matters
This research uses a specially-designed survey in secondary schools in rural Bangladesh to look at the role of student effort in educational achievements and as a factor in overcoming disadvantage and inequality. The researchers looked at the test results of Bangladeshi schoolchildren in mathematics and English and evaluated the importance of effort relative to their … Read more
Family forerunners? Parental separation and partnership formation in 16 countries
This paper looks at whether children whose parents separated are more likely to cohabit rather than get married. The researchers looked at the partnerships of more than 130,000 men and women in 16 countries over five birth cohorts spanning 50 years. The research – one of the first to look at partnership formation patterns across countries … Read more
Investigating the genetic architecture of noncognitive skills using GWAS-by-subtraction
Little is known about the genetic architecture of traits affecting educational attainment other than cognitive ability. We used genomic structural equation modeling and prior genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of educational attainment (n = 1,131,881) and cognitive test performance (n = 257,841) to estimate SNP associations with educational attainment variation that is independent of cognitive ability. … Read more
Inequalities in Children’s Experiences of Home Learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown in England
This paper combines novel data on the time use, home-learning practices and economic circumstances of families with children during the COVID-19 lockdown with pre-lockdown data from the UK Time Use Survey to characterise the time use of children and how it changed during lockdown, and to gauge the extent to which changes in time use … Read more
Estimation of intergenerational mobility in small samples: evidence from German survey data
Using data from the German socio-economic panel, this paper provides new evidence on intergenerational mobility in Germany by focusing on intergenerational association in ranks—i.e. positions, which parents and children occupy in their respective income distributions. We find that the association of children’s ranks with ranks of their fathers is about 0.242 for individual labor earnings … Read more
Mental health outcomes of adults born very preterm or with very low birth weight: A systematic review
Preterm birth research is poised to explore the mental health of adults born very preterm(VP;<32+0 weeks gestational age) and/or very low birth weight(VLBW;<1500g) through individual participant data meta-analyses, but first the previous evidence needs to be understood. We systematically reviewed and assessed the quality of the evidence from VP/VLBW studies with mental health symptoms or … Read more
Common Core Assessments in follow-up studies of adults born preterm – Recommendation of the Adults Born Preterm International Collaboration
Background: Of all newborns, 1%-2% are born very preterm (VP; <32 weeks) or with very low birthweight (VLBW; ≤1500 g). Advances in prenatal and neonatal care have substantially improved their survival, and the first generations who have benefited from these advances are now entering middle age. While most lead healthy lives, on average these adults … Read more
Formal differentiation at upper secondary education in Finland: subject-level choices and stratified pathways to socio-economic status and unemployment
This paper looks at how Finnish students’ track placement at upper secondary school is associated with their later-life socio-economic status and probability of unemployment using high-quality full population register data. The study finds that choosing advanced maths – in a system where students are given the freedom to make their own subject-level decisions – leads … Read more
Does tracking really affect labour-market outcomes in the long run? Estimating the long-term effects of secondary-school tracking in West Germany
This paper investigates to what extent track attendance in secondary education affects labour-market prospects of West German individuals with similar starting conditions. The article also focuses on whether track attendance has a role in widening social inequality. Using pooled data from two panel studies on West Germans born between 1964 and 1986, the researchers investigate … Read more