Growing up among bright books and generous genes: The InterGenerational cycle of educational achievement

Introduction

Poor educational achievement in childhood is a major risk factor for poor health and low income in adulthood. Poor educational outcomes tend to run in families, generating a cycle of inequality. Children whose parents talk and read less to them tend to struggle in school. This parent-child association has been interpreted as a causal effect of parenting, but parents provide their children not only with a rearing environment but also genes.

We can only discover causal effects of the home learning environment (e.g., parent-child interactions, reading storybooks) if we control for genetics or run an RCT. My overarching aim is to discover which aspects of the home learning environment causally impact children’s language, reading, and math development.

Methodology

INTERGEN will use a variety of innovative observational and experimental designs. We will employ existing rich datasets and collect novel data to triangulate four intergenerational (i.e., parent-child) designs.

Using an online-learning platform, we will assess parent and child literacy and numeracy in 3000 twin families. In an RCT, 2000 of these families will get access to the online-learning platform to boost the home learning environment.

Objectives

INTERGEN will:

1. Include gene-environment interplay in studying children’s motivation, literacy, and numeracy development.
2. Discover which features of the home learning environment have a causal impact on learning.
3. Test the effectiveness of offering families an online-learning platform to practice literacy and numeracy.

Conclusion

My training and established network in both education and genetics, combined with recent breakthroughs in statistical modeling, gene-finding work, and educational technology, make me uniquely suited to lead this timely project. INTERGEN has the ground-breaking opportunity to unravel the mechanisms underlying familial educational disadvantage. This will inform policy on how to target malleable causal mechanisms to ensure that all children can learn and thrive.