According to a new study published in the Economic Journal, Children who have a large number of books in the house when they are growing up tend to be higher earners later in life.
Economists Giorgio Brunello, Guglielmo Weber and Christoph Weiss found that, “whereas individuals in rural areas were most affected by [school] reforms [over the period studied], those with many books enjoyed substantially higher returns to their additional education”.
An extra year of schooling increased a man’s average lifetime earnings by 9%.
However, those brought up with very few books at home only saw a 5% rise in lifetime earnings resulting from an extra year’s education. For those with a large number of books, the rise was 21%.
Hopefully, many parents would start raising their children up with many books.
S.O.Z