Associations between parental socioeconomic status and children’s cognitive skills are mostly broad and non-specific

Parental socioeconomic status (SES) is a well-established predictor of children’s neurocognitive development. Several theories propose that certain cognitive skills are particularly vulnerable. However, this is difficult to test because cognitive assessments are not pure measures of distinct neurocognitive processes – scores across different tests are often highly correlated. We examined if parental SES is associated with individual cognitive test scores after controlling for latent general cognitive ability using structural equation modelling. Data from three large-scale cohorts totalling over 16,360 participants from the UK and USA (ages 6-19) was used. Associations between SES and cognitive test scores can mainly, but not wholly, be explained through general cognitive ability. Socioeconomic advantage was associated with particularly strong vocabulary performance, not explained by general ability. The reverse was observed for some executive function tests. Better characterizing relationships between cognition and adversity is a crucial first step toward designing interventions to narrow socioeconomic gaps.