What is driving the relationship between height and cognition? Evidence from the Twins Early Development Study
利用双胞胎数据，研究发现身高与认知能力的正相关关系在控制遗传和环境因素后依然存在，表明遗传因素并非唯一驱动因素。
Taller children tend to have better cognitive ability, and the relationship between height and cognition has been proposed as an explanation for the height-wage labor market premium. Height-cognition associations may arise due to social factors that favor taller individuals or be driven by "common factors" that are correlated with height and cognition. Indeed, there is now evidence of a genetic correlation between height and cognition that provides specific evidence for this concern. We examine whether genetic factors explain the relationship by estimating associations between childhood height and cognition in the Twins Early Development Study. We find that height is associated with better cognition even after controlling for genetic and environmental factors shared by twins. The association between height and cognition within fraternal twin pairs is also robust to controlling for individual genetic predictors of height and cognition. These results suggest that genetic factors are not solely responsible for driving the relationship between height and cognition.