An important new study led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and published by the Equality of Opportunity Project sheds light on some of the key factors holding back U.S. innovation. Previous analyses focused on the direct relationship between national and state policies and innovation, but this project's study follows individuals from childhood to adulthood, examining factors that predict inventive activity from an early age.
For a large segment of children, researchers find an expected pattern: higher math test scores from an early age predicted inventive activity in later years. Surprisingly, this association does not hold for low-income students; high-scoring children in poverty are just as unlikely to file patents later in life as low-scoring children.
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