Remember that prolific poem "All I needed to learn I learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum? Well, according to a recent study, it may have been all you needed to earn a decent salary as an adult too!
A provocative new study concludes that children who do well in Kindergarten earn substantially more as adults. The study was based on a longitudinal Tennessee experiment that tracked 12,000 children students who are now 30 years old. It concluded students that had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. They were also less likely to become single parents, save more for college and earn more.
All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.
To read more on my thoughts about this study and about parental guilt, check out my post "Keeping the Guilt of Raising Children in Check" over on the Family Today Section of The Washington Times Community Section and please feel free to comment over there too!
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