Click to read a very interesting interview of cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham. From "Why Does Family Wealth Affect Learning?" (American Educator):
Question: Why do wealthy kids usually do better in school than poor kids?
Answer: Disadvantaged children face a host of challenges to academic success. These challenges fall into two broad categories. First, as one might expect, wealthier parents have the resources to provide more and better learning opportunities for their children. Second, children from poorer homes are subject to chronic stress, which research from the last 10 years has shown is more destructive to learning than was previously guessed. But research also shows it’s not all about money.
"Common knowledge" does not always turn out to be true, especially in matters relating to schooling. But when it comes to wealth and educational outcomes, common knowledge has it right: on average, kids from wealthy families do significantly better than kids from poor families. Household wealth is associated with IQ1 and school achievement, and that phenomenon is observed to varying degrees throughout the world. Household wealth is associated with the likelihood of a child graduating from high school and attending college. With a more fine-grained analysis, we see associations with wealth in more basic academic skills like reading achievement6 and math achievement. And the association with wealth is still observed if we examine even more basic cognitive processes such as phonological awareness, or the amount of information the child can keep in working memory (which is the mental “space” in which thinking occurs), or the extent to which the child can regulate his emotions and thought processes.
But these effects are not due to household income alone. In fact, it’s unlikely that they are directly due to income at all. Imagine showering cash on a low-income family; there will not be a sudden boost to the children’s cognition or academic achievement. The effects of wealth must be indirect and must accrue over time.
Indeed, researchers believe that a useful way to conceive of the impact of wealth is that it provides access to opportunities. Money is an obvious enabler of opportunities: cash buys books, and summer enrichment camps, and access to tutoring if it’s needed. But in addition to financial capital, two other types of capital afford opportunities for children: Human capital refers to the skills or knowledge of individuals, usually based on their education and experience. Parents who have a good deal of human capital in the form of education will, in subtle and overt ways, impart their knowledge to their children. Social capital refers to beneficial connections in social networks, such as ties to people with financial or human capital. Parents with a lot of social capital might have friends or relatives who can provide helpful summer internships for their child, or they might be more likely to have well-placed friends who can advocate for their child if he has a problem at school.
Naturally, we’d expect financial, human, and social capital to be related. ...
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