The num­ber of books in your house­hold has more of an effect on your child’s aca­d­e­mic achieve­ments than your edu­ca­tion or income, a recently pub­lished study (pdf) has found.

Sug­gest­ing that the effects seem to be far from triv­ial, the con­clu­sion indi­cates that sim­ply the pres­ence of books in their house can make chil­dren more intel­li­gent.

Just hav­ing books around the house (the more, the bet­ter) is cor­re­lated with how many years of school­ing a child will com­plete. The study […] found that grow­ing up in a house­hold with 500 or more books is “as great an advan­tage as hav­ing university-educated rather than unschooled par­ents, and twice the advan­tage of hav­ing a pro­fes­sional rather than an unskilled father.” Chil­dren with as few as 25 books in the fam­ily house­hold com­pleted on aver­age two more years of school­ing than chil­dren raised in homes with­out any books.

[Another study] found that sim­ply giv­ing low-income chil­dren 12 books (of their own choos­ing) on the first day of sum­mer vaca­tion “may be as effec­tive as sum­mer school” in pre­vent­ing “sum­mer slide” — the degree to which lower-income stu­dents slip behind their more afflu­ent peers aca­d­e­m­i­cally every year.

Upon read­ing this I had the same thought as Jonah Lehrer: “But what to do in a world of Kin­dles and iPads?”