Critics of “Helicopter parenting” styles adopted by middle class parents have claimed that they lead to children who are poorly prepared for the real world. Now, economists have argued that such intensive pushy parenting can bring life-changing benefits to children, particularly when it comes to academic achievement. Dr Matthias Doepke, a professor of economics in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, and co-author Dr Fabrizio Zilibotti of Yale University are behind the claims.

In their new book, through personal anecdotes and original research, the pair show that in countries with increasing economic inequality, such as the United States, parents push harder to ensure their children to have a path to security and success. Dr Doepke and Dr Zilibotti analysed academic tests of 15-year-olds around the world, according to reports in the New York Times. They then compared these results to reports from teenagers and their parents about how they interact. The researchers discovered that “helicopter parenting” styles were linked to higher academic attainment.

“My parents expected us to show up for meals, go to school and be home before dark, but other than that, we had a lot of freedom.” Dr Doepke said. “The reality is that I am now a much more intensive parent who spends a lot of time on parenting, just like most other American parents today.”

They also looked at data on parenting across countries and realised that their economic approach explained a lot about why parenting differs around the world.

Economics has transformed the hands-off parenting of the 1960s’ and 1970s’ into an overscheduled activity, they say. Growing inequality has also resulted in an increasing “parenting gap” between richer and poorer families.

This raises the possibility of decreased social mobility (流动) and fewer opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. “We argue that parents respond to the environment they face, and depending on what that environment is, there can be outcomes that are socially problematic even if most parents do the best they can.” Dr Doepke said.

“In the U.S. today, the biggest concern is inequality in parenting, or what we refer to as the ‘parenting gap’ between social classes.”

Both authors’ view is that most parents are doing the right thing given the economic circumstances that they and their children face.

There’re currently 21.5 million students in America, and many will be funding their college on borrowed money. Given that there’s now over $1.3 trillion in student loans on the books, it's pretty clear that many students are far from sensible. The average student’s debt upon graduation now approaches $40, 000, and as college becomes ever more expensive, calls to make it “free” are multiplying. Even Hillary Clinton says that when it comes to college, “Costs won’t be a barrier.”

But the only way college could be free is if the faculty and staff donated their time, the buildings required no maintenance, and campuses required no utilities. As long as it's impossible to produce something from nothing, costs are absolutely a barrier.

The actual question we debate is who should pay for people to go to college. If taxpayers are to bear the cost of forgiving student loans, shouldn’t they have a say in how their money is used?

At least taxpayers should be able to decide what students will study on the public dime. If we're going to force taxpayers to foot the bill for college degrees, students should only study those subjects that are of greatest benefit to taxpayers. After all, students making their own choices in this respect is what caused the problem in the first place. We simply don’t need more poetry, gender studies, or sociology majors. How do we know which subjects benefit society? Easy.

Average starting salaries give a clear indication of what type of training society needs its new workers to have. Certainly, there’re benefits to a college major beyond the job a student can perform. But if we’re talking about the benefits to society, the only thing that matters is what the major enables the student to produce for society. And the value of what the student can produce is reflected in the wage employers are willing to pay the student to produce it.

A low wage for elementary school teachers, however, doesn’t mean elementary education isn’t important. It simply means there’re too many elementary school teachers already.

Meanwhile, there’re few who’re willing and able to perform jobs requiring a petroleum engineering major, so the value of one more of those people is very high.

So we can have taxpayers pick up students’ tuition in exchange for dictating what those students will study. Or we can allow students both to choose their majors and pay for their education themselves. But in the end, one of two things is true:

Either a college major is worth its cost or it isn’t. If yes, taxpayer financing isn’t needed. If not, taxpayer financing isn’t desirable. Either way, taxpayers have no business paying for students’ college education.

Every year, thousands of teenagers participate in programs at their local art museums. But do any of them remember their time at museum events later in life? A new report suggests that the answer is yes – and finds that alumni (毕业生) of arts-based museum programs credit them with changing the course of their lives, even years after the experience.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles recently asked researchers to conduct a study to find out how effective their long-standing teen art programs really are. They involved over 300 former participants of four programs for teens that have been in existence since the 1990s. Alumni, whose current ages range from 18 to 36, were invited to find out how they viewed their participation years after the fact.

Among the alumni surveyed, 75 percent of alumni rated the teen program experience as the most favorable influence on their own lives, beating family, school and their neighborhoods. Nearly 55 percent thought that it was one of the most important experiences they’d ever had, regardless of age. And two-thirds said that they were often in situations where their experience in museums affected their actions or thoughts.

It turns out that participating in art programs also helps keep teens enthusiastic about arts even after they reach adulthood: 96 percent of participants had visited an art museum within the last two years, and 68 percent had visited an art museum five or more times within the last two years. Thirty-two percent of program alumni work in the arts as adults.

Though the study is the first of its kind to explore the influence of teen-specific art programs in museums, it reflects other research on the important benefits of engaging with the arts. A decade of surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts found that childhood experience with the arts is significantly associated with their income and educational attainment as adults. Other studies have linked arts education to everything from lower drop-out rates to improvement in critical (批判性的)thinking skills.