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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral genetics
  • Social science
  • Stratification studies

Background:

  • Classical behavioral genetics models partition traits into heritability, shared environment, and nonshared environment.
  • Heritability estimates for adult traits often exceed shared environmental influences, leading to claims about upbringing's limited impact.
  • Educational attainment is a key nondemographic variable in social science, exhibiting unusually high estimates for both heritability and shared environment.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the anomalous finding of high shared environmental influences on educational attainment.
  • To propose and evaluate complementary explanations for this phenomenon beyond family resources.
  • To advance the understanding of how behavioral genetics can inform social stratification research.

Main Methods:

  • Review and synthesis of existing evidence on behavioral genetics and educational attainment.
  • Articulation of eight potential complementary explanations for high shared environment effects.
  • Discussion of the prospective contributions of these explanations to resolving the puzzle.

Main Results:

  • The study identifies a puzzle: educational attainment shows high heritability and high shared environment estimates, contrary to typical findings.
  • Existing explanations, such as family resources, are insufficient to account for the high shared environmental estimates.
  • Eight complementary hypotheses are proposed to explain the shared environment component of educational attainment.

Conclusions:

  • The high shared environmental influence on educational attainment requires novel explanations beyond traditional models.
  • Behavioral genetics findings can offer new insights into social stratification.
  • Further research is needed to fully understand the interplay of genetic and environmental factors in educational outcomes.