Higher Earning Power as Adults is Music to Kids' Ears

NEW YORK--Music may strike fire in the hearts of man, but does it also fill his pockets?

A recent study by Harris Interactive (HPOL) shows that 83% of people who make more than $150,000 a year had some type of musical training when they were young. According to the study, conducted in October of 2007, 86% of college graduates and 88% of people with postgraduate degrees had music lessons as children. That shows that being connected with music is important, said Regina Corso, director of the Harris Poll.

“The takeaway from the study is that people are obviously getting something big out of music,” Corso said. “Fourty-four percent of those who had musical training said it has helped them strive for individual excellence, and given them a disciplined approach to life. Basically, it equips people to be team players and it’s fun.”

The study did not take into consideration the type of music studied, and Corso said that people surveyed had done everything from private flute lessons in kindergarten to performing in garage bands in high school. “The idea of being connected with music is the important thing here,” Corso said.

Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, a book about the benefits of music in early childhood, said that music reaches multiple levels of the brain simultaneously.

“Music in early childhood as well as high school creates an organized, auditory means for the development of time/space coordination,” Campbell said. He said he was “not at all surprised” to hear of the study, but cautioned that “not everyone who studies music is going to make a lot of money.”

The key is helping children foster their problem-solving skills "and those are developed through play with other children, not through music,” said Thomas L. Reed, an associate professor of early childhood education at the University of South Carolina Upstate. “Music is a mathematical skill, so I’d be willing to bet [the individuals in the study] also did well in math, which may be the reason why they earn more.”

Reed, who is also vice president of the International Play Association, which advocates the rights for children to develop through play as opposed to living as "little adults," agreed with Campbell, saying that musical talent is often nurtured by loving parents, and that upbringing has a lot to do with later life success.

“Any child I have seen that has musical talent seems to also have involved parents, so it seems they do perform better academically, but a lot of that has to do with attention that’s given to them,” Reed said.

He said that the benchmark for a child’s success is typically the parents’ income and educational level. “If you want to increase any score in any particular school, the more parent involvement there is, the better the score," Reed said. "That’s a pretty known fact.”

However, Reed said that he did see potential correlating benefits between childhood music and the adult workplace.

“Musicians have to show up on time for lessons, and punctuality is pretty important wherever you go,” he said.