3 ms·

Source? I haven’t heard that before. It’s certainly not true for anyone in congress or upwards.

barry-cotter 7y ago
Parental income and education are both heritable for the same reason height and hair colour are heritable. Grandparent is directionally correct although the effect of parental education on child education is almost entirely mediated by IQ and Conscientiousness. So people who were middle and upper class in their home country but come to richer countries have children who achieve similar success in their new country even if they end up owning a dry cleaners because they can’t really speak English. > The heritability of conscientiousness facets and their relationship to IQ and academic achievement https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.long https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.long > Genetic research has shown that intelligence makes a major contribution to the heritability of educational achievement. However, we show that other broad domains of behavior such as personality and psychopathology also account for genetic influence on GCSE scores beyond that predicted by intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE scores. > The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf > Our findings confirmed positive associations between IQ and the facets of Competence and Dutifulness (ranging 0.11–0.27), with academic achievement showing correlations of 0.27 and 0.15 with these same facets and 0.15 with Deliberation. All conscientiousness facets were influenced by genes (broad sense heritabilities ranging 0.18–0.49) and unique environment, but common environment was judged unimportant.
- throwaway66920 7y ago
  I meant the claim that most politicians are middle class. That being said... I’m no genetic expert but I’m pretty sure these papers are garbage. They keep referring to genetic influences but as far as I can tell, do not use any genome data. It’s true that twins share genes. That doesn’t mean that is the only thing they share. There’s incredible potential for confounding effects.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    > They keep referring to genetic influences but as far as I can tell, do not use any genome data. It’s true that twins share genes. That doesn’t mean that is the only thing they share. There’s incredible potential for confounding effects. The difference and similarities between fraternal and identical twins and non twin siblings are a huge part of why twin studies are so powerful for discerning heritability. Fraternal and identical twins differ by genes but not environment so you can get a decent estimate of heritability from that alone. If you want polygenic risk scores for academic achievement it’s an active area of research. > Predicting educational achievement from DNA https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016107?fbclid=IwAR2Hv8EpgxY9iZiSFebneX4OfM6zXoRUGAHnflmkUqdfxZaGHdGWEf9dAH8 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016107?fbclid=IwAR2Hv8Epg... > 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.
topkai22 7y ago
It probably is, although I can’t quickly find a direct source. The “middle class” is extremely broad in the US, encompassing like 60-70% (or more) of the population, with the lower class taking up 20-30% and the upper class taking 1-10% (these things aren’t well defined). It would be shocking if most Congress critters were coming from such a small upper class. Some evidence- since 1952, 5 presidents could be said to coming from the upper class (Kennedy, 2 bushes, Johnson, Trump) and 7 came from middle to lower class backgrounds. I also saw an article (which I can't find right now) that while top private colleges were disproportionately represented in congress, the majority of members still did their undergrad at state schools or die not attain an undergrad degree.
amyjess 7y ago
FWIW, most people in politics are in state and local government. Congress is a drop in the bucket.

Parental income and education are both heritable for the same reason height and hair colour are heritable. Grandparent is directionally correct although the effect of parental education on child education is almost entirely mediated by IQ and Conscientiousness. So people who were middle and upper class in their home country but come to richer countries have children who achieve similar success in their new country even if they end up owning a dry cleaners because they can’t really speak English. > The heritability of conscientiousness facets and their relationship to IQ and academic achievement https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.long https://www.pnas.org/content/111/42/15273.long > Genetic research has shown that intelligence makes a major contribution to the heritability of educational achievement. However, we show that other broad domains of behavior such as personality and psychopathology also account for genetic influence on GCSE scores beyond that predicted by intelligence. Together with intelligence, these domains account for 75% of the heritability of GCSE scores. > The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV448.pdf > Our findings confirmed positive associations between IQ and the facets of Competence and Dutifulness (ranging 0.11–0.27), with academic achievement showing correlations of 0.27 and 0.15 with these same facets and 0.15 with Deliberation. All conscientiousness facets were influenced by genes (broad sense heritabilities ranging 0.18–0.49) and unique environment, but common environment was judged unimportant.

throwaway66920 7y ago
I meant the claim that most politicians are middle class. That being said... I’m no genetic expert but I’m pretty sure these papers are garbage. They keep referring to genetic influences but as far as I can tell, do not use any genome data. It’s true that twins share genes. That doesn’t mean that is the only thing they share. There’s incredible potential for confounding effects.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > They keep referring to genetic influences but as far as I can tell, do not use any genome data. It’s true that twins share genes. That doesn’t mean that is the only thing they share. There’s incredible potential for confounding effects. The difference and similarities between fraternal and identical twins and non twin siblings are a huge part of why twin studies are so powerful for discerning heritability. Fraternal and identical twins differ by genes but not environment so you can get a decent estimate of heritability from that alone. If you want polygenic risk scores for academic achievement it’s an active area of research. > Predicting educational achievement from DNA https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016107?fbclid=IwAR2Hv8EpgxY9iZiSFebneX4OfM6zXoRUGAHnflmkUqdfxZaGHdGWEf9dAH8 https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016107?fbclid=IwAR2Hv8Epg... > 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.

topkai22 7y ago

It probably is, although I can’t quickly find a direct source. The “middle class” is extremely broad in the US, encompassing like 60-70% (or more) of the population, with the lower class taking up 20-30% and the upper class taking 1-10% (these things aren’t well defined). It would be shocking if most Congress critters were coming from such a small upper class. Some evidence- since 1952, 5 presidents could be said to coming from the upper class (Kennedy, 2 bushes, Johnson, Trump) and 7 came from middle to lower class backgrounds. I also saw an article (which I can't find right now) that while top private colleges were disproportionately represented in congress, the majority of members still did their undergrad at state schools or die not attain an undergrad degree.

amyjess 7y ago

FWIW, most people in politics are in state and local government. Congress is a drop in the bucket.