Books and status attainment: Scholarly capital or cultural capital?

Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class. This is a great advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor. This in turn translates into occupational advantages as well. It presents an alternative to the popular concept of cultural capital where high culture is said to be prominent in status attainment. It proposes that concrete material resources in the home reflect a household's scholarly culture and that this has a considerable impact on socioeconomic status attainment. This can be shown using survey data across many of the world's societies.