Search icon

Parenting

29th Oct 2020

Naughty children make more money as adults, a study has found

Trine Jensen-Burke

naughty children make more money

Constantly dealing with tantrums and sass?

You’ll be happy to hear that there is a silver lining.

Because now a study has revealed that there is a link between mischief and mayhem and future salary.

Yup, that’s right. The naughtier your kids, the more money they will make when they are all grown up, apparently.

In a study published in Developmental Psychology, 745 children in Luxembourg were followed from they were about 12 years old in 1968 until 2008, when their average age was 52. And the results are in. People who defied authority as kids tended to have higher incomes as grownups.

And guess what the results proved? The kiddos who defied authority when they were little tended to make more money as adults.

To investigate, the researchers from the University of Luxembourg, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and The Free University of Berlin relied on information given to them by parents (or primary caregivers), as well as teachers. And despite socio-economic background also naturally being taken into account, the results were clear that “rule-breaking and defiance of parental authority” were the best predictors of which children ended up making the most money.

The report explains:

“Students who scored high on this scale might earn a higher income because they are more willing to be more demanding during critical junctures such as when negotiating salaries or raises.”

As well as this, the researchers theorised that troublemakers, “have higher levels of willingness to stand up for their own interests and aims, a characteristic that leads to more favourable individual outcomes—in our case, income.”

We are going to look at the positive note with this one, parents. Looks like we might be getting that holiday home in Spain after all!