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Social mobility, regression to the mean and the cognitive development of high ability children from disadvantaged homes
Author(s) -
Jerrim John,
Vignoles Anna
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-985x.2012.01072.x
Subject(s) - disadvantaged , regression discontinuity design , spurious relationship , millennium cohort study (united states) , regression , cognition , cognitive development , psychology , regression toward the mean , cohort , regression analysis , politics , developmental psychology , demographic economics , econometrics , economic growth , economics , political science , cohort study , statistics , mathematics , neuroscience , psychoanalysis , law
Summary. A gap in cognitive skill between richer and poorer children is evident from a very early age. Some studies have also suggested that highly able children from disadvantaged homes are overtaken by their rich but less able peers before the age of 10 years, in terms of their cognitive skill. This finding has become a widely cited ‘fact’ within the academic literature and has had a major influence on public policy and political debate. We show that this finding is vulnerable to a spurious statistical artefact known as regression to the mean and we propose the application of an alternative methodology to address this problem. After applying some simple adjustments for regression to the mean to data from the Millennium Cohort Study, we no longer find convincing evidence that able but disadvantaged pupils fall behind their more advantaged but less able peers.