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by b_emery
3222 days ago
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The editorial you site is from 2005, while the other paper is from 2014. The latter looks like a large and well designed study. Here is a quote from the conclusion: "What are the implications of our findings? Our main finding is that it is important that young children are being read to. This is an early-life intervention that seems to be beneficial for the rest of their lives. We show that there is an important role for parents in the educational performance of their children. The evidence strongly suggests that parental reading to children gives them a head-start in life." I haven't studied either enough to say for sure, but it appears the the 2014 paper is trying to measure the marginal benefit of reading, while the Levitt study was looking at larger correlations. The Levitt study suggests that smart parents end up with smart kids, reading or not. What is more interesting to me at least, is what can I do to help my kids succeed? The 2014 paper comes closer to answering this question, and suggests reading to them helps. |
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To clarify, it wasn't a "Levitt study" per se. It was government study. The government had questionnaires asking parents "how often do you read to your children?" and it had the children's reading test scores. Levitt found no correlation in those 2 datapoints.