Sociologists looking at a long-running British longitudinal study have uncovered a link between reading as a teenager and job outcomes at age 33:
Of all the free-time activities teenagers do, such as playing computer games, cooking, playing sports, going to the cinema or theatre, visiting a museum, hanging out with their girlfriend or boyfriend, reading is the only activity that appears to help them secure a good job.
This is one of the conclusions of an Oxford University study into 17,000 people all born in the same week in May 1970. They are now grown up and in their early 40s and the sociological study has tracked their progress through time.
At the age of 16, in 1986, they were asked which activities they did in their spare time for pleasure. These answers were then checked against the jobs they were doing at the age of 33, in 2003.
Mark Taylor, the researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford found that there was a 39 per cent probability that girls would be in professional or managerial posts at 33 if they had read books at 16, but only a 25 per cent chance if they had not. For boys the figures rose from 48 per cent to 58 per cent if they read books.
This reminds me of a recent argument from two American sociologists that giving college students more opportunities to read and write led to better educational outcomes, which presumably might be related to better jobs down the road.
I suppose this could also lead to an interesting discussion about whether this motivation should or could be used with teenagers. Would teenagers buy into an argument that reading now will help them down the road? My guess is that this argument would be difficult to make as the future and its jobs might seem a long way off. Also, should we be pushing people to read for instrumental reasons (like getting a job) or do they have better life outcomes if they read because of curiosity or for pleasure?
Legally Sociable 