Wedding Woes

YES!

Now I have scientific research to back me up! I NEED to buy books; they're for Bacon's education!

book collection sm250 Number of Books in the Home Linked to Kids Education LevelIt’s been well-documented that children who are read to on a regular basis become better readers themselves and do better in school.  But new research indicates that if you want your child to be highly educated, don’t just read the books, collect the books.

Researchers have long thought that the education level of parents was the strongest predictor of how far their children would go in their own educational careers.  But a new 20-year study out of the University of Nevada, Reno, find that regardless of their parents’ education levels, American children who grow up in homes with lots of books in the house attend an average of 3.2 more years of school than those who grow up in bookless homes.  That’s the same number of educational years attained by kids of university-educated parents.

This books-to-education ratio differed by country with Chinese children receiving the most benefit from a large family book collection.  There, kids whose parents had a 500-book library attained an average of 6.6 more years of education.

Even if you have a much smaller collection of books, lead researcher Mariah Evans says there is still a benefit to be gained.  As few as 20 books has an impact and the more you add, the greater the impact.  “You get a lot of ‘bang for your book’,” she says.  “It’s quite a good return-on-investment in a time of scarce resources.”

This study is interesting but also a bit of a head-scratcher.  Do these book collectors have to actually be seen by their children reading the books?  What of those families who have hundreds of books coming in and out of the home via the local library, but don’t actually amass a collection of their own?  What about Kindle readers?  Are we potentially depriving our children of higher education by choosing to read electronically?

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