LAUSR

Significance Children of highly educated parents perform better in school; this may be due to social environments or genes. Most studies do not distinguish between the two, meaning that genetic associations may confound environmental explanations (and vice versa). Those taking both factors into account have mostly focused on societies with relatively high degrees of inequality and low social mobility. We investigate these dynamics in a social democratic welfare state (Norway). Parental educational advantage is attenuated only to a small degree when accounting for genetics. There were no important interactions between children’s genotypes and their parents’ education or genotype. Genetic and social inheritance appear to wield two largely independent sources of influence on educational achievement, even in a robust, Scandinavian welfare state.