  This paper shows how nature (i.e., one's genetic endowments) and nurture
(i.e., one's environment) interact in producing educational attainment. Genetic
endowments are measured using a polygenic score for educational attainment,
while we use birth order as an important environmental determinant of
educational attainment. Since genetic endowments are randomly assigned
within-families and orthogonal to one's birth order, our family fixed effects
approach exploits exogenous variation in genetic endowments as well as
environments. We find that those with higher genetic endowments benefit
disproportionally more from being firstborn compared to those with lower
genetic endowments.
