It’s no secret that a healthy portion of books in the home leads to more good things happening to the kids that live and grow up there.
In his 2010 piece, Home Libraries Provide Huge Educational Advantage, Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard alerted us to a comprehensive study that made clear that “the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.”
Now, eight years later, Jacobs is back at it with the results of a new study that confirms that not only do books furnish a room but they continue to be a leading indicator of improved performance in a range of areas. The study features surveys of adults (ages 25 to 65) in 31 nations.
“Growing up with home libraries boosts adult skills…beyond the benefits accrued from parental education, or [one’s] own educational or occupational attainment,” the researchers report.
They also found that “growing up with few books in the house was associated with below-average literacy rates, while he presence of around 80 books raised those rates to the mean. Literacy continued to increase with the number of reported books up to around 350, at which point it flattened out.”
So the question now is – how do we get at least 80 books in every home!