my life with depression.com

i’ve been reading a book called FREAKONOMICS by steven levitt and shephen dubner. levitt is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal (awarded every two years to the best american economist under forty). his views on conventional wisdom is pretty out-of-the-box. he is seen as a maverick who asks the most interesting questions:

1. if drug dealers make so much money, why do they still live with their mothers? too long to explain
2. which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? the pool
3. do schoolteacher cheat to meet high-stakes testing standards? yes they do
4. what really caused crime rates to plunge during the past decade? introduction of abortion

this guy is not making any moral statements. he’s just trying to answer the questions using personal observations and curiosity. he sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else has found. he figures a way to measure and effect that veteran economists had declared unmeasurable.

so one of the questions that caught my interest was - what are some indicators of a child’s performance in school? and can parents do anything about it.

they used data from a large national study by the u.s. department of education which measured the academic progress of demographic data even goes down to how many books a child has to whether parents spank them.



they found eight factors that strongly corrilates (negatively or positively) to the types of grades the child will have. feel free to guess the eight factors:

child has highly educated parents

child’s family is intact

child’s parents have high socioeconomic status

child’s parents recently moved into a better neighborhood

child’s mother was 30+ years old at the time of first child

child’s mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten

child has low birth weight

child attended ‘head start’

child’s parents speak english in the home

child’s parents regularly take child to museums

child is adopted

child is regularly spanked

child’s parents are involved in the pta (parents-teacher association)

child frequently watches television

child has many books at home

child’s parents read to him nearly every day.

FOR ANSWER, SCROLL DOWN
























the following eight is found to have a strong correlation (positive or negative effect) to higher grades:

1. child has highly educated parents

2. child’s parents have high socioeconomic status

3. child’s mother was 30+ years old at the time of first child

4. child has low birth weight

5. child’s parents speak english in the home

6. child is adopted

7. child’s parents are involved in the pta (parents-teacher association)

8. child has many books at home

notice that the 8 that does affect the child’s grades describe who parents are;

the rest describes things that parents do.

parents who are well educated, successful and healthy tend to have children who test well in school; but it doesn’t seem to matter much whether a child is taken to museums, spanked or is sent off to watch tv.