Young adult intelligence and education are correlated with socioeconomic status in midlife

Educational attainment and intelligence, and to a smaller extent parental education and father’s occupational class, are associated with midlife socioeconomic status, according to a new study published September 10, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Erik Lykke Mortensen of University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Socioeconomic status (SES)—a measure of individual differences in access to material and social resources—has long been linked with health, morbidity, and cognition. Previous studies have found paternal occupation, childhood intelligence, and educational attainment to be important predictors of SES later in life.

In the new study, researchers used data on 6,294 members of the Metropolit 1953 Danish Male Birth Cohort, which has followed Danish men over the course of many decades. Those included in the new analysis had participated in an intelligence assessment at age 12 and were still living in Denmark at age 50.

Educational attainment at age 30, and IQ at age 12, were mostly strongly correlated with midlife socioeconomic status, explaining more than half (53.5%) of SES variance. Young adult height, late childhood creativity and arithmetic test scores, parental education, and father’s occupational class also showed some predictive associations, improving the explained variance to 54.1%. These effects were mostly indirect and ultimately mediated through intelligence and education; children of well-educated parents, for instance, are more likely to pursue higher education.

The study is limited by its reliance on one generation of Danish men and the results may not be generalizable to other populations, the authors caution. However, they conclude that educational attainment and young adult intelligence are the most powerful predictors of midlife SES.

The authors add: “It is important that we were able to confirm the importance of family background and intelligence and to show that education was a particularly strong predictor of midlife socio-economic status in Denmark. However, it may be even more important that the results show that the influence of early life factors is underestimated unless both direct and indirect effects are analyzed.”

“In younger generations of Danes, education may be a somewhat weaker predictor, while individual characteristics such as intelligence and personality may have a stronger influence on socio-economic status attainment.”

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: http://plos.io/47CkKYj

Citation: Mortensen EL, Okholm GT, Flensborg-Madsen T, Osler M, Hegelund ER (2025) A life course perspective on predictors of midlife socioeconomic status. PLoS One 20(9): e0330130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0330130

Author countries: Denmark

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.