You can tell at 3 if child will be a criminal

A SIMPLE test at the age of three can predict if children will grow up to be a burden on society, scientists claim.

A fifth of the population are responsible for 81 per cent of convictions, 77 per cent of children brought up without fathers, two-thirds of benefit claims and more than half of the nights spent in hospital.

But researchers at King’s College London say the troubled lives of this group could be forecast from early childhood.

It takes just 45 minutes to give threeyear-olds a battery of tests on their language abilities, motor skills, frustration levels and how impulsive they are.

The study found that, decades later, those children who had performed badly in the tests were 26 per cent more likely to fall within the most burdensome group that drains the public purse.

They were also more likely to smoke, be obese and take prescription drugs.

The findings, while controversial for indicating that someone’s life path is set in their early years, suggests these at-risk children could be identified and given help to turn things around.

Professor Terrie Moffitt, of King’s College and Duke University in North Carolina, US, said: ‘About 20 per cent of the population is using the lion’s share of a wide array of public services. The same people use most of the NHS, the criminal courts, the claims for disabling injury, pharmaceutical prescriptions and social welfare benefits.

‘If we stopped there, it might be fair to think these are lazy bums living off the taxpayer and exploiting the public purse.

‘But we also went further to look back into the childhoods of the people in our study, and we found that this 20 per cent began their lives with mild problems with brain function and brain health when they were very small children, at the age of three.’

She added: ‘It gives you a feeling of compassion for these people, as opposed to a feeling of blame.’ The study was carried out on New Zealanders, as there are ‘barriers’ to accessing birth studies to compare with state records in the UK. Researchers looked at more than 1,000 people born between 1972 and 1973, following them up to the age of 38.

The results showed that children with lower brain function aged three were 38 per cent more likely to claim benefits and 22 per cent more likely to be feckless fathers. Their chances of being a smoker were 25 per cent higher and they were 15 per cent more likely to end up overweight.

This was based on four key tests, including the Peabody picture vocabulary test, which asks children to name images, and the Reynell test of speech, asking them to describe pictures in more depth.

Children’s motor skills were checked by asking them to walk in a straight line or stand on one leg.

But, crucially, during these tests children were also monitored for how well they managed their emo- tions during stressful tasks, including their frustration, restlessness, impulsivity and persistence.

Explaining the results, co-author Professor Avshalom Caspi, of King’s College and Duke’s University, said: ‘Essentially these children were functioning like a twoand-a-half-year-old, they were six months behind.

‘For these individuals, life is really an uphill battle, opportunities are limited and mastering new skills is not easy. These early difficulties have a snowballing effect.’

The finding that many of these children become the ’20 per cent’ most costly for society is based on the Pareto principle, which is also called the 80-20 rule.

Italian engineer and social scientist Vilfredo Pareto observed a century ago that 80 percent of wealth is controlled by 20 percent of the population and that this proportion applies to many other areas of life.

Josh Hillman, director of education at the Nuffield Foundation, which was not involved in the research, said the 20 per cent should be helped early in life.

He called for disadvantaged children to be signed up to nursery school with qualified teachers from an early age, adding: ‘These are the children who stand to benefit the most from the support of the education system. These are the children you can make the most difference with, in terms of the children themselves and the payback for the public purse.’

‘Life is an uphill battle’