Scientists have seem a found a rather unthought-of link between wealth accumulation and adulthood.
Timing it back to birth, individuals who are born premature and less likely to be wealthy in adulthood, scientists have found. And this is probably due to their poor mathematical abilities, they say.
The study conducted by the researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK found that preterm birth was largely associated with lower academic abilities in childhood, leading to lower educational attainment and thus less wealth in adulthood.
“Together, these results suggest that the effects of prematurity via academic performance on wealth are long term, lasting into the fifth decade of life,” Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick in the UK said.
Basing its results on data examined from two large longitudinal studies – the UK National Child Development Study (1958) and the British Cohort Study (1970), researchers found that adults who were born preterm tended to have lower educational qualifications and lower wealth at age 42 than those who were born full-term.
“What is perhaps most surprising is that most of the children we studied were not very preterm – born, on average, only 5 weeks early – and still we find these long lasting effects,” co-author of the study, Maartje Basten, marked.
The findings of the study are published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science.
