IQ Predicts Academic Performance Better Than Parental SES

Honestly, I'm not surprised at all by these results, although it is tricky to study because IQ is heavily hereditary within a broad "normal" range of nurture conditions, so distinguishing parental socio-economic status (SES) effects from IQ is challenging, methodologically.

In this post, I will review studies comparing the predictive validity of cognitive ability and parental socioeconomic status (SES) on academic achievement. I’ll start with some important statistical background that is necessary to understand the studies cited in this post. After those preliminaries, I start by reviewing meta-analyses reporting the correlations between parental SES and achievement and between cognitive ability and academic achievement. Next, I review individual studies investigating the relative predictive validity of ability and parental SES on grades. The final section will review individual studies investigating the relative predictive validity of ability and parental SES on test scores. A clear picture emerges from each study cited in this post: cognitive ability is a far better predictor of academic achievement than is parental SES.

From “Parental SES vs cognitive ability as predictors of academic achievement”