In this series which shows how growth and overal adult height is correlated with other areas of one’s life, I move towards the connection between educational attainment and self reported height of men at the age of 18.
RESULTS:
The odds ratio (OR) for attaining higher education 7-27 years after baseline was 1.10 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.09-1.10] in fully adjusted models per 5 cm increase in height. Men taller than 194 cm were two to three times more likely to obtain a higher education as compared with men shorter than 165 cm. The association remained within brother-pairs, OR 1.08 (95% CI 1.07-1.10), suggesting that non-familial factors contribute to the association between height and education attainment. A significant interaction (P < 0.0001) was found between year of birth, height, and attained education, showing slightly weaker associations among later birth cohorts.
CONCLUSIONS:
The strong positive association between height and educational achievement remaining after adjustment for year of birth, parental socioeconomic position, other shared family factors, and cognitive ability may reflect educational discrimination based on height although residual confounding cannot be ruled out.
Analysis:
So this almost 1 million large in size of Swedish men back in the 1970s had their height noted when they were 18 and then it seems that at the age of 27 (or 7-27 after the height was reported) they were found by the researchers and asked about the level of education they did achieve at the end. The researchers were testing to see what were the socioeconomic effects of height.
The most striking thing that was stated was probably “Men taller than 194 cm were two to three times more likely to obtain a higher education as compared with men shorter than 165 cm.”
This translates to mean that men who were taller than 6′ 4″ were 2-3 X more likely to get a college degree than men who were shorter than 5′ 5″. So can we blame it on genetics, saying that taller men are just smarter than shorter men? Or is it the result of upbringing, where the human tendency to discriminate against shorter men resulted in shorter men having less confidence in their own cognitive abilities and thus give up on attaining as much higher education as their taller counterparts?
The statement “suggesting that non-familial factors contribute to the association between height and education attainment” might shed a little light on this issue.
This shows that when the study was done on brothers who obviously had slight height differences, the same educational difference was also noticed. Brothers (like sisters being siblings) probably are as close in genetic material as possible. The biggest difference that can be seen between one brother and another brother from a phenotypical point of view would be height. On average, the brothers should be around the same level of intelligent although it would be clear that on an individual sibling comparison one side would on average be smarter than the other.
This means that genetics may not be as important towards educational attainment as say the social feedback one receives from one’s teachers and professors for being of a certain stature.
There is also a correlation with the fact that for people who are born in later order compared to their siblings, the correlation between height and educational attainment is decreased.
The researchers concluded at the end that the difference in educational attainment from height difference was of “cognitive ability may reflect educational discrimination based on height“. This means that because a person might be taller than average, they more likely got positive feedback on their cognitive abilities which lead to them developing the confidence to go through with higher levels of education.
Note that the following factors were all considered and factor out to standardize the results as much as possible…
- year of birth
- parental socioeconomic position
- other shared family factors
- cognitive ability
