Some scientists in Iceland from the company deCODE, have released stats that IQ levels are dropping from generation to generation.
According to The Guardian, the study looks at gene variants of 100,000 people from 1920 to 1975, which make people more predisposed to continue into further education.
The companies research '... found a shallow decline over the 65 year period, implying a downturn in the natural inclination to rack up qualifications.'
What is more, and perhaps quite startling, is that there is a correlation between the likelihood that someone will continue into further education and their fertility, or rather, likeliness to bear children.
They found that the more genetically likely you are to go into further education, the fewer children you are likely to have.
They stressed that it wasn't simply the social aspect of women being more educated and therefore more likely to enter into a demanding and time consuming job that might prevent them from having lots of children.
The makers of the study insist that genetics are at play here too.
Kari Stefansson, who led the study, stated that,
The cumulative effect over time means this is going to have a dramatic effect on the genetic predisposition to educational attainment, and unless something comes along to counteract that, it could have a profound effect on educational attainment in our society.
That's a lot of fancy words, but what he's saying is that the long term implications here are that less and less of the population might end up in higher education in the future, because we're less and less of the sort of people with that genetic predisposition.
Here's hoping we do manage to do something to counteract this trend, because women's education isn't going anywhere.
Daisy Murray is the Digital Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, spotlighting emerging designers, sustainable shopping, and celebrity style. Since joining in 2016 as an editorial intern, Daisy has run the gamut of fashion journalism - interviewing Molly Goddard backstage at London Fashion Week, investigating the power of androgynous dressing and celebrating the joys of vintage shopping.
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