Dunedin has a populace of just over one hundred thousand souls and houses one of that country's largest universities. This combination made the town ripe for what may be the most sig nificant study yet in the annals of science on the ingredients of life success.
In a dauntingly ambitious project, 1,037 children-all the ba bies born over a period of twelve months-were studied intensively in childhood and then tracked down decades later by a team as sembled from several countries. The team represented many dis ciplines, each with its own perspective on that key marker for self awareness, self-control.
These kids underwent an impressive battery of tests over their school years, such as assessing their tolerance for frustration and their restlessness, on the one hand, and powers of concentration and persistence on the other.
After a two-decade lull all but 4 percent of the kids were tracked down (a feat far easier in a stable country like New Zealand than, say, in the hypermobile United States). By then young adults, they were assessed for:
• Health. Physicals and lab tests looked at their cardio vascular, metabolic, psychiatric, respiratory, even dental and inflammatory conditions:
• Wealth. Whether they had savings, were single and rais ing a child, owned a home, had credit problems, had investments, or had retirement funds.
Crime. All court records in Australia and New Zealand were searched to see if they had been convicted of acnme.
The better their self-control in childhood, the better the Dune in kids were doing in their thirties. They had sounder health, were more successful financially, and were law-abiding citizens.