Educational attainment (EA) is moderately heritable1 and an important correlate of many social, economic, and health outcomes2,3. Because of its relationship with many health outcomes, measures of EA are available in most medical data sets. Partly for this reason, EA was the focus of the first large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) of a social-science phenotype4 and has continued to serve as a “model phenotype” for behavioral traits (analogous to height for medical traits). Genetic associations with EA identified via GWAS have been used in follow-up work examining biologizcal5 and behavioral mechanisms6,7 and genetic overlap with health outcomes8,9.
