Economic Background and Educational Attainment
研究发现家庭收入与教育成就的关联强度因儿童携带的MAOA基因版本不同而差异显著，对理解经济不平等如何通过基因与环境交互影响教育结果有重要启示。
Abstract On average, children from less economically privileged households have lower levels of educational attainment than their higher-income peers, and this association has important implications for intergenerational mobility and equality of opportunity. This paper shows that the income-education association varies greatly across groups of children with different versions of a specific gene, monoamine-oxidase A (MAOA), which impacts neurotransmitter activity. For children with one MAOA variant, increases in household income have the expected positive association with education. For children with another variant, who comprise over half of the population, this relationship is much weaker. These results hold when the interactive effects are identified using genetic variation between full biological siblings, which genetic principles assert is as good as randomly assigned.