Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Modelling the On-going Natural Selection of Educational Attainment in Contemporary Societies

Ze Hong
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/605311
Ze Hong
aDepartment of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, 02138 Cambridge MA, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: ze_hong@g.harvard.edu
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

There has been substantial increase in education attainment (EA) in both developing and developed countries over the past century. I present a simulation model to examine the potential evolutionary trajectories of EA under current selective pressure in western populations. With the assumption that EA is negatively correlated with fitness and has both a genetic component and a cultural component, I show that when prestige-biased transmission of the EA (i.e. people with more education are more likely to be copied) is present, the phenotype of EA is likely to keep increasing in the short term, yet the genetic component of EA may be undergoing a constant decline and eventually lead to an overall decrease in the phenotype.

Significance statement Contemporary humans live in very different environments from our ancestors and are subject to very different selective forces. The future evolutionary trajectory of current human populations is thus of both intellectual and pragmatic importance. The present simulation model sheds light on the short-term evolutionary dynamics of educational attainment, and demonstrates the significant contribution of systematically transmitted human culture in shaping the evolutionary paths and producing non-intuitive evolutionary outcomes.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted April 17, 2019.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Modelling the On-going Natural Selection of Educational Attainment in Contemporary Societies
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Modelling the On-going Natural Selection of Educational Attainment in Contemporary Societies
Ze Hong
bioRxiv 605311; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/605311
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Modelling the On-going Natural Selection of Educational Attainment in Contemporary Societies
Ze Hong
bioRxiv 605311; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/605311

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4231)
  • Biochemistry (9124)
  • Bioengineering (6774)
  • Bioinformatics (23981)
  • Biophysics (12115)
  • Cancer Biology (9518)
  • Cell Biology (13772)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7625)
  • Ecology (11682)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15500)
  • Genetics (10637)
  • Genomics (14317)
  • Immunology (9476)
  • Microbiology (22825)
  • Molecular Biology (9087)
  • Neuroscience (48943)
  • Paleontology (355)
  • Pathology (1480)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2567)
  • Physiology (3844)
  • Plant Biology (8324)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1471)
  • Synthetic Biology (2295)
  • Systems Biology (6184)
  • Zoology (1300)