The interaction between innate abilities and social origins on academic performance: Persistent inequalities across academic trajectories in England

Research shows that children with similar levels of cognitive ability experience markedly different educational outcomes. This paper examines how innate abilities (measured using a polygenic index for cognition) and social origins (understood as different forms of family economic, educational, and sociocultural resources) interact to shape academic performance across primary and secondary education in England (ages 7 to 18). Drawing on data from the Millennium Cohort Study linked to the National Pupil Database, this study asks whether social origins moderate the association between genetic traits and academic performance, and whether the strength and direction of this moderation varies across educational stages. The findings show that gene-by-social origins interactions operate differently across levels of academic performance, becoming most evident at the tails of the performance distribution. At the lower tail, students from socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are largely protected from low achievement regardless of their genetic traits, producing a ‘glass floor’ consistent with the Compensatory Advantage hypothesis. At the upper tail, genetic advantages translate into high performance primarily among students from advantaged backgrounds, creating a ‘glass ceiling’ for disadvantaged students in line with the Boosting Advantage hypothesis. These compensatory and boosting patterns operate consistently across educational stages: social origin gaps are already evident at the start of primary school and remain broadly stable throughout academic trajectories. Overall, this study demonstrates that the realisation of genetic propensities is strongly context dependent and points to a pattern of talent wastage, whereby high-ability students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less able to fulfil their potential within the British education system.