Success Related to Work

Two Harvard researchers, Dr. George Vaillant and Caroline Vaillant, report that success in adulthood is more related to a child's capacity to work than to his intelligence, social status or family background. Their study involved 456 men, mostly from Boston working-class immigrant families, interviewed periodically from their adolescence up through age 47. The Vaillants discovered that those who worked hardest as children developed into the best-paid and most satisfied family men. Their work as youngsters had usually consisted of household chores, part-time jobs, sports and studies. The least hardworking as youths later encountered more unemployment and unhappiness as well as a higher death rate.