A couple weeks back, a post extolling the virtues of in-home libraries went viral on X. “Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes

Do "books in the home" really improve academic achievement?

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2024-11-26 19:00:07

A couple weeks back, a post extolling the virtues of in-home libraries went viral on X. “Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teens skills equivalent to university graduates” it triumphantly declared. The post linked to an article by the Guardian spotlighting a study which purported to show that having a large # of books in the home during adolescence led to higher literacy and numeracy skills during adulthood.

This backlash is not at all surprising and, dare I say, completely deserved. The Guardian article completely ignores key limitations of the paper including, but not limited to, omitted variables bias, measurement issues, and collider bias. 1 Personally though, I think this situation is quite unfortunate as the central question the paper attempts to answer is actually quite important: namely, how much do books in the home actually matter for children’s educational prospects?

Having comprehensively reviewed the literature on this subject, I want to stake out the following claim: books in the home have a modest causal impact on children’s academic achievement.