Development of Economic Concepts among Egyptian Children

Abstract

The influence of two intracultural variables, socioeconomic status and work experience, on the development of economic concepts among Egyptian child-ren were investigated using a sample of 180 boys from 2 social classes and 2 age groups. Each age group (of 90 subjects) was subdivided into 3 groups of equal numbers: a lower-class working group, a lower-class nonworking group, and an upper-class group. Questions concerning various economic concepts were asked and were supplemented by further inquiry to clarify each child's under-standing. Children's responses were coded and analyzed on the basis of a set of categories of varying levels of conceptualization. Results demonstrate that a general developmental pattern exists in children's understanding of economic concepts comparable to Western and non-Western findings. Differences between the two socioeconomic groups were statistically significant only among the older groups. While conceptual differentiation increased with age, progression from one conceptual level to the next was not always parallel between children coming from widely different socioeconomic backgrounds. The effect of the work experience, while not reaching the conventional level of significance, was qualitatively noted in certain concepts. This highlights that the socioeconomic variable is more significant than work experience as a source of conceptual variation among different subcultural groups.