School performance of IVF children due to non-biological mother
Does school performance depend on innate talents or upbringing? Amsterdam econometrics professor Erik Plug is studying this question in a novel way: He is using information on IVF children.
The level of education of a non-biological mother influences children’s school performance, while it is unimportant what kind of degree a non-biological father has in his pocket. That, in a nutshell, is the conclusion of UvA professor Erik Plug.
Together with two other researchers, he examined the academic performance of IVF children, who are conceived with either a sperm or an egg from a donor. These children therefore grow up with a non-biological father or mother. The data come from Denmark, as this is where such data are available.
The outcome: Children with a non-biological mother perform better in school if she is highly educated. That cannot be due to hereditary characteristics, is the conclusion, because those characteristics come from another woman. There is no such connection with non-biological fathers.
Adoption
But what makes these mothers so influential? Plug compared the results with data on adopted children. In those families, parental education level appeared to have much less influence. Perhaps the difference stems from the fact that adopted children come into a family later, say when they are roughly one year old.
“It seems that non-biological mothers of IVF children are especially influential when the children are very young,” Plugsaid on the UvA website. “The prenatal experience in the womb might also be important for the child’s development.”
Twins
The question of nature or nurture is an old one. Does genetic predisposition dictate life or does everything depend on upbringing? To answer this question, scientists often study identical and fraternal twins. Plug and his colleagues have come up with a new approach. Their research will appear in a prestigious journal of econometrics.
