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

Stephen Krashen
Multicultural Education 12 (4): 16-19, 2005

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 US in 1978, and the Hmong.

The Boat People and the Hard Work Hypothesis

The Boat People, according to Caplan, Choy and Whitmore (1992) came only with "the clothes on their backs." Nevertheless, their children did well in American schools. Caplan et. al., (1989, 1992) examined a subset of these children (n = 355) in grades K through 12 and reported that their overall gradepoint average was 3.02, nearly exactly a B, and they did especially well in math: A group of high school students from their sample (n = 97) scored at the 72^nd percentile on the math CAT.

How did they do it? Hard work and family values, according to Caplan et. al., with lots of homework (a specific time set aside for homework every evening, with older children helping the younger ones. Caplan et. al. document this: Those in high school averaged three hours and ten minutes homework per evening, those in junior high two and a half hours. The US average for junior high and high school is 1.5 hours.

The Hmong and the Hard Work Hypothesis

The Hmong, immigrants from Laos, also appear to support the Hard Work hypothesis, the hypothesis that hard work (homework) can overcome the disadvantages associated with poverty. As a group, the Hmong are among the poorest of immigrant groups and are among the least educated. For the 14,000 Hmong in California in 1990, median household income was $16,000 per year, compared to the then national average of $36,000 (University of Wisconsin, 2000). Only 3% of the Hmong in California had graduated college (University of Wisconsin, 2000); compare this to the finding that 42% of the Chinese/other Asian group studied by Portes and Rumbaut (2001) had graduated college.