Study: Disobedient Children have Higher Salaries as Adults

Disobedient children tend to end up with higher paychecks as adults, a new study is reporting.

The research team from the University of Luxembourg, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Free University of Berlin, collected data on 745 people living in Luxembourg from the ages of 12 to 52 (1968 to 2008). They tracked the income and education level of all of the participants. The participants' behaviors were rated via questionnaires that their teachers filled out.

They found that both defiant and studious children were more likely to stay in school longer and achieve higher levels of education. When comparing the participants' salary, however, the researchers found that those who were described as disobedient were more likely to be making more money.

"Rule breaking and defiance of parental authority was the best non-cognitive predictor of higher income after accounting for IQ, parental socio-economic status, and educational attainment," the researchers wrote, reported by Sydney Morning Herald. "We also cannot rule out that individuals who are likely or willing to break rules get higher pay for unethical reasons. Research in the field of organizational psychology showed that employees invest in unethical or deviant workplace behavior when they are not satisfied with their income and they have a high level of love of money."

Critics of the study noted that the sample size was relatively small.

The study was published in Development Psychology.