The overarching goal of this study was to disentangle the genetic and socio-environmental pathways underlying parental influences on educational attainment. Our findings indicated that parents influence offspring educational attainment through direct genetic transmission, social genetic effects, and socio-environmental pathways. Specifically, parental education polygenic score was associated with offspring educational attainment, above and beyond the effect of offspring education polygenic score, providing evidence for social genetic effects on educational attainment. Parental educational attainment, income, and parenting behaviors served as important socio-environmental pathways that mediated the effect of parental education polygenic score on offspring educational attainment. We observed a similar pattern of social genetic effects being mediated by parental educational attainment and income for fathers and mothers. However, parental bonding appeared to be a more relevant pathway of social genetic effects for mothers than for fathers.
