Genetic association of risk behaviours and educational attainment

Abstract Risk behaviours such as alcohol use, smoking, and physical inactivity are common in adolescence and persist into adulthood. People who engage in more risk behaviour are more likely to have lower educational attainment. Genome-wide association studies show that participation in risk behaviours and level of education are both heritable and have a highly polygenic architecture, suggesting an important role of many variants across the genome. The extent to which risk behaviours and educational attainment have shared genetic overlap is unknown, yet knowledge of this could help understand how these traits co-occur and influence each other. In the ALSPAC cohort, we used genome-based restricted maximum likelihood (GREML) to estimate the genetic covariance between risk behaviours and educational achievement. We found a strong genetic component of educational achievement and a modest genetic component of the risk behaviours. Whereby children who have a higher genetic liability for education also have a lower genetic liability for risky behaviours.