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nottheletter_M t1_j0uqg6s wrote

Reply to comment by mmillington in Has your reading habit helped your career? by theelegantprof

I don’t know the name of the research’s off the top of my head, but I once read a study where the findings showed that children who grew up with books in their home had higher incomes in adulthood compared to those who didn’t even when controlling for potential confounding variables such as SES, gender, IQ, race, ethnicity, etc.

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mmillington t1_j0usx4r wrote

Yeah, the takeaway isn't that you should simply have books in the house. The key is that people who have books in their house are people who tend to be preselected for certain "outcomes."

New parents who aren't readers see studies like you mention and think they should go buy books and expect those outcomes. But it's really that people who read regularly have numerous common traits: early childhood literacy, higher education, simply seeing their parents reading makes them more likely to read.

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nottheletter_M t1_j0uu61z wrote

Of course, I think the idea is that most people who have books in their house also read those books, which I know is not always the case. The most important factor that research has found for reading leading to positive developmental improvements for children is actually when kids read books they enjoy by their own choice and are not forced to read. I feel encouraging that is where the real struggle lies.

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mmillington t1_j0v2dwu wrote

Yeah, that's the key. Adult readers are also likely library users, and taking kids to the library to pick out their own books makes a world of difference.

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