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It seems obvious that childhood behaviors predict adult outcomes, but demonstrating how this occurs is not easy. Researchers in Canada used data on 2850 children born in 1980 or 1981, including kindergarten teachers' questionnaire-based evaluations when subjects were 5 or 6, and prospectively correlated these ratings with average annual income at ages 33 to 35 as reported on tax returns.
Inattention, hyperactivity, physical aggression, oppositional behavior, and anxiety, as well as family adversity, were significantly correlated negatively with earnings in adulthood, whereas prosocial behavior and higher IQ were correlated positively with earnings. In analyses controlling for IQ and family adversity, a 1-unit increase in inattention in kinde…