Abstract

While previous research has conclusively established that children with higher cognitive ability and those originating from advantaged socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds have better educational outcomes, the interplay between the influences of cognitive ability and social origin has been largely overlooked. The influence of cognitive ability might be weaker in high-SES families as a result of resource compensation, and stronger in high-SES families owing to resource multiplication. We investigate these mechanisms while taking into account the possibility that the association between cognitive ability and educational attainment might be partly spurious due to unobserved genetic and environmental influences. We do so by analysing a large sample of twins from the German TwinLife study (N_pairs = 2,190). Our results show that the association between cognitive ability and educational attainment is to a large extent confounded by genetic and shared environmental factors. If this is not considered, and this is the case in most previous studies, high-SES parents seem to compensate for the lower cognitive ability of their children. However, when we consider the genetic and shared environmental confounding, the resource compensation effect becomes non-significant.

中文翻译：

---

资源补偿还是倍增？解释教育素养中认知能力与社会渊源的相互作用

摘要

尽管先前的研究已经得出结论，具有较高认知能力的孩子和那些来自具有良好社会经济地位（SES）背景的孩子具有更好的教育成果，但认知能力和社会出身的影响之间的相互作用却被大大忽略了。认知能力的影响可能由于资源补偿而在高SES家庭中较弱，而在高SES家庭中由于资源增加而较弱。我们在研究这些机制的同时，考虑到由于未观察到的遗传和环境影响，认知能力和受教育程度之间的关联可能是部分虚假的可能性。为此，我们分析了来自德国TwinLife研究的大量双胞胎样本（N_对= 2,190）。我们的结果表明，认知能力与受教育程度之间的关联在很大程度上受到遗传和共享环境因素的困扰。如果不考虑这一点，并且在大多数先前的研究中都是这种情况，那么高社会经济地位的父母似乎可以弥补孩子较低的认知能力。但是，当我们考虑遗传和共享环境的混杂时，资源补偿的作用就变得不重要了。