That's not what it's saying though, it's merely saying that structured enrichment activities are no better at improving your cognitive skills than the other things kids choose to spend their time on if they weren't forced to do structured enrichment.

They even point this out as a specific point in the abstract: You can't compare kids doing enrichment activities to kids not doing enrichment activities while controlling for every other variable to be the same, because it is manifestly true that time spent on enrichment activities can not be spent on other activities, such as sleep or socializing, which also have benefits.

> They even point this out as a specific point in the abstract: You can't compare kids doing enrichment activities to kids not doing enrichment activities while controlling for every other variable to be the same, because it is manifestly true that time spent on enrichment activities can not be spent on other activities, such as sleep or socializing, which also have benefits.

Please double-check my reading comprehension of your comment. Are you saying that it is not possible to analyze the benefits of enrichment activities as opposed to what normal kids do, because there is no way to have a group of kids who do exactly what normal kids do + enrichment activities, because taking the time to do enrichment activities necessarily knocks out at least one activity normal kids do, thereby making control impossible?

There’s a difference between taking cello classes for some rich kid to get into Princeton and normal people. I didn’t grow up in a particularly bad neighborhood, but time I spent playing baseball, Boy Scouts, etc kept me away from trouble. I wasn’t directly exposed to drinking, smoking and other not so smart things in middle school. I got the benefit of encountering those things when I was older.

When I was in high school I volunteered as a counselor at a summer program affiliated with my dads job in an inner city environment. The stuff we did help keep those kids, 2-4 grades younger than me, away from (or perhaps delayed) getting recruited into the drug trade.

Asking bankers and economists to measure educational and social outcomes sounds pretty dumb. Enrichment isn’t designed to produce ROI, it’s to enrich your experience as a human being. We don’t have the income mobility we once did, so folks are likely to land in whatever income strata they came from. Using income as a metric to measure whether enrichment activities are worthwhile or not is the same as evaluating the quality of apples based on the price of oranges.

I think it matters if kids enjoy those activities. If they hate them and are forced into it then the answer is quite obvious, they’re not gonna get that much out of it.

At the same time kids at that age don’t know what their best interests are and could do too much of an activity with diminishing returns while not developing other skills.