Can nurture compensate for nature?

Parents are important determinants of children’s life success both through their genetic transmission and upbringing. We examine how parents affect children’s intelligence, personality and educational attainment. In particular, we study whether genes and environment interact when forming traits and behaviours. To this end, we make use of Swedish-born adoptees, and study how inputs from biological parents and adoptive parents affect children’s outcomes, and the extent to which these inputs interact with each other. To better understand the importance of policy for social mobility, we also study whether the interaction between nature and nurture has changed over time.

Previous research has attempted to separate the importance of nature and nurture, for example by studying adoptees or twins. However, there is some evidence suggesting that people’s characteristics are determined by a complex interaction between innate predisposition and upbringing, and that the importance of genes and environment cannot be easily disentangled. Still, there is limited evidence about the extent to which children’s upbringing can mitigate – or strengthening – of the genetic predisposition when forming traits and behaviours.