Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#81

Post by andrepd » Mon, May 30, 2016, 4:31 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #22

andrepd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus is the right answer, not "inheritability of intelligence". Economic status propagates through generations much more directly than any genetic quality like intelligence (which isn't even a quality commanded to a significant degree by genetics)

> Economic status propagates through generations much more directly Economic status only lasts on average 3 generations. > genetic quality like intelligence (which isn't even a quality commanded to a significant degree by genetics) Actually quite the opposite. Intelligence is almost entirely genetic. The reason you think economic status propagates is actually that intelligence propagates, and intelligence is strongly…

Source for those claims?

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#82

Post by andrepd » Mon, May 30, 2016, 4:34 AM UTC

tsmffh wrote: post #36

andrepd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thus is the right answer, not "inheritability of intelligence". Economic status propagates through generations much more directly than any genetic quality like intelligence (which isn't even a quality commanded to a significant degree by genetics)

> (which isn't even a quality commanded to a significant degree by genetics) Evidence?

The figure most often quoted is 0.5 for inheritability of intelligence (doi:10.1007/BF01067188), and don't forget this means genetic+environmental factors. Inheritability of wealth of course depends on the specfic society, but the figure of 0.7 was quoted by another commenter below.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#83

Post by ryanf » Mon, May 30, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #72

mercer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd very much appreciate it if both of you present some evidence, because I now realize my vague assumptions about this are not really based on anything...

https://dqydj.com/individual-incomes-versus-the-amount-of-ho... The general phenomenon here is very well known; just searching around for this I found stuff like "UK time use data for the period 1961-2001 do indeed indicate a reversal of the previously negative leisure/status gradient". ( https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/files/iser_working_papers/2005-... ). But that paper is obviously more concerned with the UK than the…

It's weird to assume that all time spent outside a paying job is leisure time. People who have money can afford to spend a lot less time cooking, taking care of children and elderly parents, etc.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#84

Post by TheMagician0 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 2:34 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #58

yeahbutbut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be a shelf full of $2 novels. Owning a few hundred books doesn't cost very much (thanks printing press), and only implies an interest in reading not in being of a high socioeconomic status.

This makes me wonder if ebooks have the same effect --- because these days, owning a few thousand of them or more, although perhaps maybe not completely legally, is nothing more than the price of an Internet connection.

I too wonder about this. Having read from physical books most of my life and switching to ebooks/PDFs (reading from laptop or iPad) was not as fun/convenient as I thought it would be. Although saving resources, the feeling I get when holding a book and writing in it (jogging down thoughts or deriving equations) are irreplaceable by electronic files.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#85

Post by rrss1122 » Tue, May 31, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

I didn't live in a house with books, but my mother took me and my sisters to the library very often when we were kids. For me personally, I believe that access to books gave me much of my motivation to learn, particularly with regards to astronomy. It was early reading of astronomy books that got me really interested in science. Growing up, I didn't do particularly well in language and literature, mainly because I just wasn't interested. If I hadn't been allowed to develop an innate interest in science through astronomy, I doubt I would have done as well in math and science classes as I did because I expect I would have found them uninteresting too. I credit that early interest in science as a big factor in me now having a well-paying programming career.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#86

Post by wry_discontent » Tue, May 31, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

gambler wrote: post #56

stuxnet79 wrote: post #12

Honestly, I spent a lot of my childhood / teen years reading and engaging in other solitary activities and I sometimes feel like my time would have been better served trying to connect with my peers. I still read a lot these days, but I just do it with no expectation to derive future benefit from it. Mind you my reading these days is 70% non-fiction. I put reading in the same category of entertainment as TV and video…

Unpopular opinion time... A lot of written fiction constitutes an intelligent person intently thinking about some subject, drawing upon their experienec and communicating their ideas. This kind of thing happens much more rarely on TV and in video games. And it almost never happens in casual communication. Now, if you buy the increasingly popular notion that ideas and perspectives don't matter, than you're unlikely to…

You definitely can watch tv in a more active way and see underlying themes in most shows, even if they're unintentional.

Re: Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’

#87

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, May 31, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

njohnson41 wrote: post #18

tokenadult wrote: post #4

I'm delighted that my three boys and one girl have grown up or are still growing up in a house full of books in English, Chinese, German, and other languages. Sure enough, my oldest son makes a fine income as a hacker--but wait, I grew up in a house full of books too, and I've NEVER made as much money as he already makes. A correlational study like this can't show us the path of causation, if any. Any behavior geneti…

There could also be a simpler causal link: books and lucrative jobs could both caused by higher family socio-economic status.

> There could also be a simpler causal link: books and lucrative jobs could both caused by higher family socio-economic status.

ISTR in the last few years seeing similar research that controlled for most typical measures of SES that are associated with positive outcomes (parents income, parents educational attainment, etc.) which found that growing up with more books in the home had a positive impact on a number of outcome measures (leveling off once at about 100 books.)

I suspect that there is some degree in which it is serving as a proxy for as-yet-unidentified socio-economic, genetic, and parenting style and parental personality traits, but I also suspect even once all those were identified and taken into account, simply having books handy has some positive effects.