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Does growing up poor shape the way people make financial choices later in life? A well-known 2011 study argued yes, finding that people who experienced childhood poverty were more likely to take financial risks and chase short-term rewards under conditions of uncertainty and threat. But new research from the Leeds School of Business suggests the reality is more complicated.

In a study published in July in the��, former Leeds assistant professor of marketing Joe Gladstone and Leeds Ph.D. students��Mallory Decker ���Ի���Meredith Lehman aimed to replicate the 2011 study with a more representative and robust sample. They found that only part of the original research held up.

Their study showed that people who grew up in lower-income households were somewhat more likely to take financial risks in situations where they may feel threatened. But unlike in the earlier study, they did not consistently prefer short-term over long-term payoffs.

Childhood poverty explained less than 1% of the differences in risk-taking behavior, the researchers found.

“These results, while significant, were so small that it's hard to really say that they would make a meaningful difference to anyone in terms of their decision making,” Decker said.

The new study involved more than 1,000 U.S. adults recruited online, far more than the 71 university students included in the��. Participants in the new study were about 40 years old on average and represented a wide range of incomes and education levels.

“Our findings show replication is important,” Lehman said. “With a larger and more diverse sample, we saw much smaller effects than the original study. That should cast doubt on whether we should be using small-sample studies as foundational without replicating.”

Mirroring the original study, the new study randomly assigned participants to one of two groups. One read a news-style article describing recent trends toward violence and death in the U.S. The other read a neutral story about someone losing their keys. Afterward, participants completed two decision-making tests: One measured risk-taking by asking them to choose between a guaranteed payout or a gamble for more. The other measured their tendency to favor immediate rewards over larger ones later.

The new study asked about participants’ socioeconomic background in both childhood and adulthood, while the original focused solely on childhood. Questions covered whether families had enough money growing up, how wealthy their neighborhood felt, and how they compared themselves to peers. In the new study, similar questions assessed their current financial circumstances.

A subtler effect than headlines suggest

The new findings suggest that growing up poor does leave a mark on financial behavior in stressful situations—but it is not destiny. “We don’t want people to think they’re doomed to make riskier choices because of their background,” Decker said. “The effect is subtle compared to all the other factors that influence financial behavior.”

That nuance matters, the researchers argue, because small-sample studies can exaggerate the importance of a result. “When you scale up, you often see the effects shrink,” Lehman explained. “That doesn’t mean the original work was wrong—it just means we need to be cautious about applying it too broadly without replication.”

More complex than one theory

The 2011 study was rooted in the Life History Theory, which suggests that people adapt decision-making strategies to their early-life environments. Under that model, growing up in scarcity pushes people toward taking risks and seeking immediate rewards when threats loom.

The new study only partially supported that explanation. Risk-taking did increase slightly for participants from poorer backgrounds when put in a position where they may feel threatened. But the tendency to favor short-term payoffs over long-term gains did not materialize.��

Age may play a role: With an average age around 40, the new sample looked different from the group of college students in the earlier study.

“We think age and life stage might matter a lot more than the original framework accounts for,” Decker said. “That’s a question future research should dig into.”

Why replication matters

The study took root in Gladstone’s doctoral seminar on marketing research, which focused on the “replication crisis” in the social sciences. In recent years, psychologists, economists and others have raised concerns that many high-profile findings don’t hold up when repeated with new samples.

As students in Gladstone’s seminar, Lehman and Decker helped select the widely cited 2011 study to focus on. Despite two other subsequent attempts in small samples, no one has been able to replicate those original findings. What started as a class project grew into a multi-year research effort and ultimately, publication.��

“Replication is not as incentivized within research. It’s not as flashy as discovering something new,” Lehman said. “But replication is really important for making sure we have a solid foundation for the research and what it really means on a practical level in people's daily lives.”