The Hard Work Hypothesis: Is Doing Your Homework Enough to Overcome the Effects of Poverty‪?‬

It is well-established that the effects of poverty are devastating for children in school. More generally, scholars have documented that low "socio-economic status" (SES), whether measured by family income, parent education, or parent occupation, is usually the most powerful predictor of achievement and test score performance, sometimes swamping all other factors (White, 1982). This advantage translates to life success; children of the wealthy are far more likely to become wealthy, become professionals, and attain positions of power than children of the poor (Simonton, 1994). Simonton, in fact, concludes that "the log cabin myth is just that, pure myth" (p. 157). There have been some recent challenges to this generalization, however-claims that some children, especially Asian immigrant children and the children of Asian immigrants, do very well even though they come from high-poverty backgrounds. Two such cases are the "Boat People" of Vietnam, who arrived in the United States in 1978, and the Hmong.