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from the better-than-growing-up-to-be-a-sink dept.
Scientists at Kings College London performed a longitudinal study to test the 'Pareto principle' and found that adults who were greater users of public services were most likely to have had a low score on the intelligence and impulsivity test administered at age three.
"About 20 per cent of population is using the lion's share of a wide array of public services," said Prof Terrie Moffitt, of King's College and Duke University in North Carolina. "The same people use most of the NHS, the criminal courts, insurance claims, for disabling injury, pharmaceutical prescriptions and special welfare benefits.
"If we stopped there it might be fair to think these are lazy bums who are freeloading off the taxpayer and exploiting the public purse.
"But we also went further back into their childhood and found that 20 per cent begin their lives with mild problems with brain function and brain health when they were very small children.
"Looking at health examinations really changed the whole picture. It gives you a feeling of compassion for these people as opposed to a feeling of blame.
"Being able to predict which children will struggle is an opportunity to intervene in their lives very early to attempt to change their trajectories, for everyone's benefit and could bring big returns on investment for government."
Full Paper: Childhood forecasting of a small segment of the population with large economic burden DOI: 10.1038/s41562-016-0005
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 15 2016, @02:45PM
It's definitely a balancing act. This debate is a perhaps somewhat related to similar ones that go on about "tracking," i.e. separating kids in school by demonstrated academic ability level. On the one hand, this has benefits in ensuring that kids who need the most help are in a class where they can get it, while the more "advanced" kids don't get as bored. But on the other hand, you risk dooming kids in a lower track to staying there, because even if they're a "late bloomer" in some subject, it's often quite difficult to more upward to a higher track, since you just tend to fall further and further behind.
On even smaller levels, it's the sort of bias that has been shown again and again to happen with teachers -- teachers come to expect more from certain students, and that often reinforces itself: teachers may unintentionally be more lax in grading, or they may pay more attention to when a "good student" falls behind and give them extra help or encouragement, etc. As someone who has done quite a bit of grading, it's sometimes an eye-opening experience to read assignments "blind" with no names first. Inevitably there's a surprise somewhere -- with a student objectively doing much better or worse than you might expect.
On the other hand, one can go too far in trying to ignore such information. I have an extended family member who is mentally challenged (not severely, but enough that his best chance in life may be to do something like bag groceries at a supermarket) and suffered quite a bit from attempts to "mainstream" him in school. It just led him to NOT getting the actual attention he needed; he was often just sitting uncomprehendingly in a classroom, unable to meaningfully participate in what others were doing or thinking about.
So, I agree that the question is: are there useful interventions we can do with kids this test flags, without necessarily putting them onto a specialized "track" they can never get out of, or which they are always judged for? Unfortunately, with these sorts of things, the only way to test it probably is to experiment a bit and see how it affects the outcomes.