IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/cysrev/v30y2008i10p1211-1219.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Educational attainment and cognitive competence in adopted men -- A study of international and national adoptees, siblings and a general Swedish population

Author

Listed:
  • Dalen, Monica
  • Hjern, Anders
  • Lindblad, Frank
  • Odenstad, Anna
  • Ramussen, Finn
  • Vinnerljung, Bo

Abstract

Internationally and nationally adopted young men were recently reported to have lower than average scores on intelligence tests at military conscription, compared with non-adopted conscripts in Sweden. In this study we used the Swedish national registers to analyse how this lower cognitive competence influences the educational attainment of adoptees. Intelligence test scores at conscription were analysed in relation to educational attainment at follow-up at 25-34 years in male international (n = 2.314) and national (n = 1.153) adoptees, compared with the general population in the same birth cohorts. Korean adoptees more often had obtained a post-secondary education compared with the general population while Non-Korean and national adoptees less often had such an education at follow-up. The international adoptees had a better chance than the general population to complete a post-secondary level and a lower risk to remain at a basic level when their cognitive competence, as measured by intelligence test scores, had been accounted for. This effect was quite similar in biological children in families of international adoptees who had the best test scores, in the Korean adoptees who had slightly better test scores than the general population, and in the Non-Korean adoptees who had considerably lower test scores. National adoptees had similar outcomes in these respects as the general population when test scores had been accounted for. Higher age at adoption was associated with a lower educational attainment in the Non-Korean but not in the Korean adoptees, an effect that was attenuated when test scores were accounted for. We conclude that a lower than average cognitive competence did influence the educational attainment of the Non-Korean international and the Swedish-born adoptees in this study. International but not national adoptees had attained a higher educational level than predicted from their scores on intelligence tests. This education promoting effect was similar in the Korean adoptees, who had high test scores in comparison with the general population, and the Non-Korean adoptees who had comparatively low test scores.

Suggested Citation

  • Dalen, Monica & Hjern, Anders & Lindblad, Frank & Odenstad, Anna & Ramussen, Finn & Vinnerljung, Bo, 2008. "Educational attainment and cognitive competence in adopted men -- A study of international and national adoptees, siblings and a general Swedish population," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(10), pages 1211-1219, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:30:y:2008:i:10:p:1211-1219
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(08)00077-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shaomeng Jia & Joshua K. Bedi, 2022. "To Assimilate or Not to Assimilate? A Cross-country Study on Assimilating Entrepreneurial Tendencies," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 37(Spring 20), pages 1-31.
    2. Jean-François Mignot, 2019. "Child Adoption in Western Europe, 1900–2015," Studies in Economic History, in: Claude Diebolt & Auke Rijpma & Sarah Carmichael & Selin Dilli & Charlotte Störmer (ed.), Cliometrics of the Family, chapter 0, pages 333-366, Springer.
    3. Dalen, Monica & Theie, Steinar & Rygvold, Anne-Lise, 2020. "School adjustment of internationally adopted children in primary school: A mother and teacher approach," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    4. Barcons, Natàlia & Abrines, Neus & Brun, Carme & Sartini, Claudio & Fumadó, Victoria & Marre, Diana, 2012. "Social relationships in children from intercountry adoption," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 955-961.
    5. Forsman, Hilma & Vinnerljung, Bo, 2012. "Interventions aiming to improve school achievements of children in out-of-home care: A scoping review," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1084-1091.
    6. Schoenmaker, Christie & Juffer, Femmie & van IJzendoorn, Marinus H. & van den Dries, Linda & Linting, Mariëlle & van der Voort, Anja & Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J., 2015. "Cognitive and health-related outcomes after exposure to early malnutrition: The Leiden longitudinal study of international adoptees," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 80-86.
    7. Vinnerljung, Bo & Hjern, Anders, 2011. "Cognitive, educational and self-support outcomes of long-term foster care versus adoption. A Swedish national cohort study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1902-1910, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:30:y:2008:i:10:p:1211-1219. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.