The DOI matches its Crossref record; 14 of the 14 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment
Open accessAbstract
Significance: Epidemiological studies suggest that educational attainment is affected by genetic variants. Results from recent genetic studies allow us to construct a score from a person’s genotypes that captures a portion of this genetic component. Using data from Iceland that include a substantial fraction of the population we show that individuals with high scores tend to have fewer children, mainly because they have children later in life. Consequently, the average score has been decreasing over time in the population. The rate of decrease is small per generation but marked on an evolutionary timescale. Another important observation is that the association between the score and fertility remains highly significant after adjusting for the educational attainment of the individuals.
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“The influence of natural selection is likely strongest for age at first birth in women and number of children since these traits are directly related to evolutionary fitness29.”
From Family-GWAS reveals effects of environment and mating on genetic associations (2024) · cites this paper as [29]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Since AM is strong for all of these phenotypes31 (AM is likely for age at first birth in women indirectly due to the correlation of age at first birth with EA29,37), these results suggest that larger LDSC SNP heritability estimates from population effects are primarily due to AM6, with the influence of population stratification diminished to the degree that LDSC successfully adjusts for it.”
From Family-GWAS reveals effects of environment and mating on genetic associations (2024) · cites this paper as [29]
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“The authors of the Icelandic study extrapolate that their results imply a decline of 0.30 IQ point per decade”
From Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused (2018) · cites this paper as [16]
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“Polygenic scores that predict education are correlated with IQ and have been shown to correlate negatively with fertility in Icelandic and US data (16, 17).”
From Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused (2018) · cites this paper as [16]
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Citations
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Self-citationGWAS of 126,559 Individuals Identifies Genetic Variants Associated with Educational Attainment
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BackgroundMethodModelling the On-going Natural Selection of Educational Attainment in Contemporary Societies
Hong, Z. (2019) · bioRxiv · doi:10.1101/605311 · Cited by 2
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GWAS on birth year infant mortality rates provides evidence of recent natural selection
Wu, Y., Furuya, S., Wang, Z., Nobles, J. E., Fletcher, J. M., & Lu, Q. (2022) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2117312119 · Cited by 11
Lawen, J., & Wang, E. (2018) · F1000Research · doi:10.12688/f1000research.13619.1 · Cited by 1
Gene expressivity on educational attainment increases with age, and then slows
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“Based on a century of decline in Iceland in polygenic scores associated with educational attainment (closely related to intelligence), Kong et al. (2017) estimate that the mean of this score will drop one to three tenths of a standard deviation in the next century.”
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“Kong et al. (2017) break their sample out into eight lots of birth year bins (spanning 1916 to 1986) and fit a curve to the means.”
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“For the number of children (n.children), we added two more covariates: educational attainment (EA) and the interaction EA × sex, because educational attainment is emerging as a strong determinant of an individual’s reproductive outcomes, especially for women (hence the interaction term) 51,52 .”
Kuznetsov, I. A., Giannelis, A., Lehto, K., Laisk, T., Rietveld, C. A., Vainik, U., & Pankratov, V. (2026) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.64898/2026.04.29.721701
“For example, the association between P GS EA and fertility was weaker among individuals, especially men, with higher levels of education (13, 14).”
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Self-citationProblems with studying directional natural selection in humans
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BackgroundResultBrožová, S. (2023) · Veřejná správa a sociální politika · doi:10.25142/vssp.2022.010
“…genetickou výbavou podmiňující vyšší studijní kompetence mají méně dětí, protože je mají ve vyšším věku, a tak se v dalších a dalších generacích tento ukazatel v souhrnu snižuje, neboť převládají děti z početnějších rodin, kde jsou studijní kompetence geneticky dány jako nižší (Kong et al., 2017).”
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Masallat, D. T. (2021) · The Egyptian Journal of Medical Microbiology · doi:10.21608/ejmm.2021.203639
Why Do Finns, Estonians and Finno-Ugric Peoples in Russia Have Such High Intelligence?
Dutton, E., Becker, D., & Shibaev, V. (2021) · Mankind Quarterly · doi:10.46469/mq.2021.61.4.12
“This may have caused the documented negative association between intelligence and fertility — which has been shown to have genetic consequences (Kong et al., 2017) — to commence later in Finland than in other European countries (Dutton & Woodley of Menie, 2018); or else, it may be due to a famine and subsequent pestil…”
BackgroundBlakey, M. (2020) · Archaeological Dialogues · doi:10.1017/s1380203820000070
Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Yr.
Figueredo, A. J., & Sarraf, M. A. (2018) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3838-1
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Beissinger, T., Kruppa, J., Cavero, D., Ha, N., Erbe, M., & Simianer, H. (2017) · bioRxiv · doi:10.1101/238295
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“Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 113(24):6647–6652.”
BackgroundResultComplex traits: Selecting against schooling
Minton, K. (2017) · Nature reviews genetics · doi:10.1038/nrg.2017.9
Les scores polygéniques pangénomiques comme nouvelle forme de mesure de l’humain
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Sarraf, M. A., Menie, M. A. W. O., & Feltham, C. (2019) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-32984-6_8
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Quantitative trait variation and adaptation in contemporary humans
Mostafavi, H. (2019) · doi:10.7916/d8-41g8-bd32
“Even more recent still, studies of contemporary populations have suggested that natural selection has influenced life-history traits like age at first childbirth as well as educational attainment over the course of the last century [73, 74, 75, 76, 30, 29, 31].”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Kong, A., Frigge, M. L., Thorleifsson, G., Stefansson, H., Young, A. I., Zink, F., Jonsdottir, G. A., Okbay, A., Sulem, P., Masson, G., Gudbjartsson, D. F., Helgason, A., Bjornsdottir, G., Thorsteinsdottir, U., & Stefansson, K.
- Affiliations
- deCODE Genetics (Iceland) (IS)
- deCODE genetics/Amgen Inc., Reykjavik 101, Iceland;
- Centre for Human Genetics (GB)
- Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-01-17
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- E727-E732
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5293043
- OpenAlex
- W2575032714
- Cited by
- 168
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 16
- FWCI
- 14.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (publishedVersion)
- RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePub (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock
- Keywords
- educational attainment, genetic variants, polygenic risk score, fertility, fertility decline, age at childbearing, natural selection, genetic drift
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Educational Status, Female, Fertility, Genotype, Humans, Iceland, Intelligence, Male, Genetic Variation, Genome, Human, Young Adult
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