Tuesday 25 January 2011 8:48am



View Professor Poulton and psychologist Nigel Latta discussing the research on TVNZ's Close Up show.

Young children’s self-control skills — such as conscientiousness, self-discipline and perseverance — predict their health, wealth and criminal history in later life regardless of IQ or social background, according to latest findings out of the University of Otago’s world-renowned Dunedin Multidisciplinary Study.

An international team led by Professors Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt, both of Duke University and King’s College London and Professor Richie Poulton of the University of Otago carried out the research, which provides the first hard evidence that childhood self-control does influence adult outcomes in the general population.

Their findings suggest that even small improvements in self-control for children and adolescents could yield important reductions in costs of healthcare, welfare dependency, and crime to a nation. The research is published today in the prestigious US-based journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

The researchers assessed the self-control of more than 1000 people born in Dunedin between 1972-1973 during the first decade of their life and then examined their health outcomes, wealth outcomes and criminal conviction history at age 32.

Professor Moffitt says that even after accounting for study members’ differences in social status and IQ, children as young as three who scored lower on measures of self-control were more likely than children with higher self-control to have the following outcomes as adults:

Physical health problems (including poorer lung function, sexually transmitted infections, obesity, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, dental disease)

Substance dependence (including tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and harder drugs)

Difficulty with financial planning (including savings habits, home ownership, investments, retirement plans)

Difficulty with credit and money management (including bankruptcy, missed payments, credit card problems, living from paycheque to paycheque)

Rearing a child in a single-parent household

A criminal conviction record

“However, we also found that children whose self-control increased with age tended to have better adult outcomes than initially predicted, showing that self-control can change and with desirable results,” Professor Moffitt says.

The results also suggest that like a rising tide that lifts all boats, all children — even those who already have above average self-control — could reap later rewards from universal interventions designed to improve such skills, especially in childhood but also in adolescence, she says.

“This is a highly uplifting message. Not only could the most vulnerable children have a better chance at a happy and healthy life, there is the potential for across-the-board benefits in personal, social and economic well-being.”

Professor Moffitt says the research indicates that low self-control makes children vulnerable to “snares” that could have life-long impacts on their health, wealth and well-being.

“These children tended to have difficulties while they were adolescents, including starting to smoke tobacco, becoming a teen parent of an unplanned baby, and leaving secondary school with no qualification.”

These difficulties accounted for the low self-control children’s poor adult outcomes in part, but even low-self control children who were non-smoking, non-parent, high-school graduates still had poorer outcomes at age 32, she says.

“Our research singles out children’s self-control as a clear target for prevention policy, apart from all other influential features of children’s backgrounds, such as their family life, socio-economic status or the child’s intelligence.”

Professor Moffitt says the challenge now is to develop interventions specifically focused on improving self-control skills that can be offered on a universal basis to young people.

“There have been some promising small model projects in this area, but much more work needs to be done to come up with something that could be applied on a wide scale with a good cost-benefit ratio,” she says.

Professors Caspi and Moffitt are currently visiting the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit as theme leaders in the Study’s age 38 assessment data collection phase.

The work for this study was supported through funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

For more information, please contact

Professor Terrie Moffitt,

Associate Director

Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study

Tel 64 3 479 8508

Email terrie.moffitt@duke.edu

Professor Avshalom Caspi

Tel 64 3 479 8508

Email avshalom.caspi@duke.edu

Professor Richie Poulton, Director

Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit

University of Otago

Tel 64 3 479 8508

Email richie.poulton@dmhdru.otago.ac.nz

Web http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/

A list of Otago experts available for media comment is available elsewhere on this website.

Electronic addresses (including email accounts, instant messaging services, or telephone accounts) published on this page are for the sole purpose of contact with the individuals concerned, in their capacity as officers, employees or students of the University of Otago, or their respective organisation. Publication of any such electronic address is not to be taken as consent to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages by the address holder.

Full factsheet

TITLE: A gradient of childhood-self control predicts health, wealth, and public safety.

An international research team led by Avshalom Caspi & Terrie Moffitt at Duke University, King’s College London, and the University of Otago reports that a young child’s self-control skills, such as conscientiousness, self-discipline, and perseverance, predict the child’s health, wealth, and criminal history in later life, regardless of the child’s IQ or family social class.

Publication sources

PNAS, to appear on 24 January 2011.

The findings

In 1000 Dunedin, New Zealand, study participants followed from birth to age 32, even after accounting for differences in social status and IQ, children as young as three who scored lower on measures of self-control were more likely than higher-self-control children to have the following outcomes as adults:



physical health problems assessed in medical exams and blood tests (including lung airflow limitation, periodontal disease, sexually transmitted infection, C-reactive protein indicating inflammation, and metabolic abnormalities such as overweight, cholesterol, and high blood pressure)

dependence on substances (including tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and harder drugs)

difficulty with financial planning (including savings habits, home ownership, investments, retirement plans)

difficulty with credit and money-management (including bankruptcy, missed payments, credit card problems, living from paycheck to paycheck)

rearing a child in a single-parent household,

a criminal conviction record. These adult outcomes were predictable from the entire gradient of self-control in the population, from low to high self-control. Children whose self-control improved during the 32-year study fared better as adults in measures of health, wealth, and criminal history than predicted by their initial childhood scores. Children with low self-control tended to make mistakes while they were adolescents, including starting to smoke tobacco, becoming a teen parent of an unplanned baby, and leaving secondary school with no qualification. These mistakes accounted for the low-self-control children’s poor adult outcomes in part. But even non-smoking, non-parent, high-school graduates still had poorer outcomes at age 32, if as children they had low self-control. In a second sample of 500 non-identical British twin pairs, the sibling who had scored lowest on self-control at age five was more likely than the sib with higher self-control to begin smoking, perform poorly in school, and engage in antisocial behaviors at age 12. This shows self-control is important by itself, apart from all other factors that siblings share, such as their parents and home family life.

Why are these findings important?

Although policy-makers in the USA and UK are considering national programs to improve health, wealth, and public safety through early interventions to increase children’s self-control skills, until now, researchers had not shown that childhood self-control actually does influence adult outcomes in the general population.

The gradient suggests that even small improvements in self-control for individuals could yield important reductions in costs of healthcare, welfare dependency, and crime control for a nation.

The gradient suggests that there is room to improve adult outcomes even among children whose self-control is above average, indicating that universal interventions for all children could be more desirable than targeting a few children at the extreme bottom of the distribution of self-control for treatment.

The studies single out children’s self-control as a clear target for prevention policy, apart from all other influential features of children’s backgrounds, such as family life, family social class, or the child’s intelligence.

Children in the study whose self-control increased tended to have better adult outcomes, showing that self-control can change and with desirable results.

The comparison of data from childhood versus adolescence suggests that interventions could profitably target adolescents, but also suggests that interventions with preschool children may bring a better cost-benefit ratio.

Our finding that many study members with low self-control had unplanned babies who are now growing up in low-income single-parent households reveals that one generation’s low self-control disadvantages the next generation.

Model programs to enhance self-control have been developed and positively evaluated, but the challenge remains to scale them up for widespread application.

Supporting details

Self-control was measured in assessments by teachers, parents, observers of the children, and the participants themselves. It included aspects such as “low frustration tolerance, lacks persistence in reaching goals, difficulty sticking with a task, over-active, acts before thinking, has difficulty waiting turn, restless, not conscientious.”

Outcomes were measured in medical examinations, blood tests, interviews, searches of official records, and by reports from informants who knew the study members well.

Participants

1037 members of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study which follows all children born between April 1972 and March 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand. This birth cohort’s families represent the full range of socioeconomic status and health in the general population. Follow-ups have been carried out at ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 26, and most recently at age 32, when 96% of the living cohort members took part.

1018 members of the E-Risk Longitudinal Study, which follows twins born in 1994-1995 in England and Wales. This birth cohort’s families represent the full range of socioeconomic status and health in the general population. Follow-ups have been carried out at ages 5, 7, 10 and most recently at age 12 years, when 96% of the living cohort members took part.

Media Contacts

Avshalom Caspi,

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience,

Duke University, Durham, NC

Tel 1 919 475 1702

Email avshalom.caspi@duke.edu

Terrie Moffitt,

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience,

Duke University, Durham, NC

Tel 1 919 475 2974

Email terrie.moffitt@duke.edu

Richie Poulton

Dunedin School of Medicine

Tel 64 3 479 8508 (New Zealand)

Email richie.poulton@otago.ac.nz

Universities involved

MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry Box PO80, SE5 8AF, UK Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit, Dunedin School of Medicine, Box 913, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA

The study protocol was approved by the institutional ethics review boards of the participating universities. Study participants gave informed consent for the research.

Main funding sources

The U.K. Medical Research Council

The US National Institute on Aging

The Health Research Council of New Zealand

Experts willing to be contacted by journalists

Ernst Fehr

Professor of Economics

University of Zurich

Switzerland

Email ernst.fehr@econ.uzh.ch

James Heckman, Nobel Laureate

Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics

University of Chicago

Email Cori.hirai@gmail.com

Email jheckman@uchicago.edu

Lord Richard Layard

Professor of Economics

London School of Economics

Email r.layard@lse.ac.uk

Alex Piquero

Professor of Criminology

Florida State University

Email apiquero@fsu.edu

Brent Roberts

Professor of Psychology

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Email broberts@cyrus.psych.uiuc.edu

Jack P. Shonkoff

Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor in Child Health and Development

Harvard University

Email jack_shonkoff@harvard.edu