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Children of positive mothers get better GCSE grades

8 February 2018

Findings suggest that a mother’s personality has a big impact on the academic performance of teenagers, regardless of other factors. Academics assessed women’s “internal locus of control”, how much they believed that they controlled their own lives rather than having good or bad luck. Babies born to mothers with a strong belief in their own power did better in GCSEs, even when the family background, mother’s education and her IQ and the locus of control of the child were taken into account. The findings by the Centre for Economic Performance, at the London School of Economics, are published in The Economic Journal. The study analysed data from the Children of the 90s project, which tracks the lives of more than 10,000 people born in Bristol.

Related publications

Locus of Control and its Intergenerational Implications for Early Childhood Skill Formation (pages 298-329)

The Economic Journal Volume 128, Issue 608, February 2018

Warn N. Lekfuangfu, Nattavudh Powdthavee, Nele Warrinnier, Francesca Cornaglia

DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12414

 

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