Do parents’ socioeconomic resources moderate the association between genotype and cognitive skills among children with diverse genetic ancestries?

Recent research shows that high parental socioeconomic status does not convey the same skill advantage to Black and Latinx children as to white children in the United States due to disadvantages at school for racialised and ethnicised minorities. We extend this literature by asking whether socioeconomic status moderates the association between child genotype and cognitive skills among racialised and ethnicised minorities in the United States. Hence, what we study is whether high socioeconomic status conveys an equal advantage when it comes to the relationship between genotype and cognitive skills. We use data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using molecular genetic data, we construct a polygenic index for educational attainment and test whether the association between this index and children’s cognitive skills is moderated by maternal education and household income in two principal component defined ancestry groups: African ancestries (n=1,551) and Latinx ancestries (n=890). The polygenic index for educational attainment is positively associated with cognitive skills in both groups. In the African ancestries group, this association does not differ by socioeconomic status. In the Latinx ancestries group, the results are mixed. Because our samples are likely underpowered to detect genotype-socioeconomic interactions, our results should be considered suggestive until larger samples of diverse ancestries are available. Advances in genetic research have been skewed towards European ancestry populations, and the broader implication of our study is to eliminate this bias through the collection of large, diverse genotype samples and measuring their genotypes with arrays designed for multi-ancestry populations.