Reading and Life Success

Once you control for IQ, does reading ability raise your life chances? Our analysis of the 1958 cohort suggests that raising children's reading level by 1-book grade would raise the income of the average UK adult citizen by around £5000/annum [1].

May reading even cause IQ scores to increase? MZ discordant designs allow us to test this.

Is Ken Robinson right that school drains creativity? Is there anything to the idea, widely-held among teachers, that dyslexic people are exceptionally creative? Or is the converse the case: better readers are more creative? [2]

Bibliography

1. Ritchie, S. J. and Bates, T. C. (2013). Enduring Links From Childhood Mathematics and Reading Achievement to Adult Socioeconomic Status. Psychological Science doi. PMID. ( pdf)

2. Ritchie, S. J., Luciano, M., Hansell, N. K., Wright, M. J. and Bates, T. C. (2013). The relationship of reading ability to creativity: Positive, not negative associations. Learning and Individual Differencesdoi. PMID.