It is not always about beautiful homes, lush holidays, and expensive educations. When sons and daughters of wealthy families inherit their entitled fortunes, there are often dramatic side effects. And this is causing many-a-billionaire to re-think what they leave behind. Imagine being given everything you could ever want from a young age. The best education, holidays and homes, then told you never really need to work because your family has more than enough money. A dreamy scenario for some. But there is normally a side effect: wealth robs children of motivation. The more money that is given to children from a young age, the less passion and motivation they have, say wealth advisors. An influential 1995 study concluded that by age 4 the children of highly educated professional parents typically had heard 32 million more words than poorer children. This difference, encapsulated in the catchy phrase “the word gap,” supposedly accounts for an insurmountable difference in scholastic achievement. Educators and teacher organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, have promoted this conclusion, which explains that the underperformance of poor children (for which read predominantly “black and brown”) was assured long before they went to school. If these children didn’t do well, that was on their family and their culture, not on the school system. More recent studies confirm this, and some have even found the original study “naïve, racist, classist and ineffective.” A 2017 Harvard Education Review study noted that following the widespread influence of the original study and based on cultural and racial stereotyping, many teachers have employed “less sophisticated instruction methods’ with these supposedly linguistically disadvantaged children,” a provocative conclusion that suggests the fault may lie less with the parents than with the school system. A child from a wealthy family enjoys several education advantages over a child from a poor family. First of all, as is widely known, K-12 funding comes substantially from tax revenues within a particular school district — the average is more than a third, but in some districts about 60% of all funding comes from property taxes. This affects classroom size, teacher salaries, the quality of the physical plant, and available support for both the physical plant and the teachers themselves. In consequence, children in poorer districts not only learn in crowded and often substandard classrooms, their teachers are often there because they didn’t qualify to teach in a better school district. Dropout rates for these teachers are about 50% higher than in better funded schools. He rich are different from you and I, but they still want to give their kids an allowance. So what do the world’s richest man’s kids do with their money? Melinda Gates came to TIME’s offices to talk about her new focus on women and children and especially on contraceptives, but she spilled some secrets about how she tries to get her kids to be purposeful with their money. This affects classroom size, teacher salaries, the quality of the physical plant, and available support for both the physical plant and the teachers themselves. THEIR pocket money may be higher than the average worker's salary, but doctors claim the territory's rich kids lead shallow lives deprived of parental care. The plight of the affluent youth is part of a Hong Kong still strongly divided between rich and poor. While one young temporary housing estate tenant goes hungry during the day because she cannot afford to buy snacks, the territory's rich children are addicted to golf and making friends at the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club. It is not always about beautiful homes, lush holidays, and expensive educations. When sons and daughters of wealthy families inherit their entitled fortunes, there are often dramatic side effects. And this is causing many-a-billionaire to re-think what they leave behind. Imagine being given everything you could ever want from a young age. The best education, holidays and homes, then told you never really need to work because your family has more than enough money. A dreamy scenario for some. But there is normally a side effect: wealth robs children of motivation. The more money that is given to children from a young age, the less passion and motivation they have, say wealth advisors. An influential 1995 study concluded that by age 4 the children of highly educated professional parents typically had heard 32 million more words than poorer children. This difference, encapsulated in the catchy phrase “the word gap,” supposedly accounts for an insurmountable difference in scholastic achievement. Educators and teacher organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, have promoted this conclusion, which explains that the underperformance of poor children (for which read predominantly “black and brown”) was assured long before they went to school. If these children didn’t do well, that was on their family and their culture, not on the school system. More recent studies confirm this, and some have even found the original study “naïve, racist, classist and ineffective.” A 2017 Harvard Education Review study noted that following the widespread influence of the original study and based on cultural and racial stereotyping, many teachers have employed “less sophisticated instruction methods’ with these supposedly linguistically disadvantaged children,” a provocative conclusion that suggests the fault may lie less with the parents than with the school system. A child from a wealthy family enjoys several education advantages over a child from a poor family. First of all, as is widely known, K-12 funding comes substantially from tax revenues within a particular school district — the average is more than a third, but in some districts about 60% of all funding comes from property taxes. This affects classroom size, teacher salaries, the quality of the physical plant, and available support for both the physical plant and the teachers themselves. In consequence, children in poorer districts not only learn in crowded and often substandard classrooms, their teachers are often there because they didn’t qualify to teach in a better school district. Dropout rates for these teachers are about 50% higher than in better funded schools.
