背景介绍：

一般来说，发达国家有着比发展中国家更好的教育资源，而教育资源对于一个学生的考试成绩有着至关重要的作用。所以，发达国家学生的平均成绩通常要优于发展中国家学生。但对于富国的穷学生和穷国的富学生来说，谁会有着更高的预期考试成绩呢?

It’s better to be a poor pupil in a rich country than the reverse

在富国做个穷学生要比在穷国做个富学生好

Country and family income are equally important for predicting students’ test scores

国家财富和家庭收入对于一个学生的预期考试成绩同样重要

There are some things money can’t buy. Education, however, does not appear to be among them—at least as measured by performance on international exams. On average, pupils in wealthy countries obtain vastly higher test scores than those in developing ones. In turn, strong students tend to become productive workers, making the mostly rich economies they join richer still.

有些东西是钱买不到的。但教育似乎是可以买到的，至少从国际性考试的成绩来看是这样的。平均而言，发达国家学生的考试成绩要远远优于发展中国家学生。反过来，成绩优异的学生最终往往会成为高效的员工，从而让原本就富裕的经济体变得更加富裕。

The exact mechanism by which knowledge is bought remains unclear. Do students in the rich world fare better because their governments provide superior schools? Or is the reason that they tend to have richer parents, and enjoy more educational resources at home?

购买知识的确切机制目前尚不清楚。发达国家的学生之所以表现得更好，是因为政府提供了更好的学校吗?还是因为他们的父母更富有，使其在家就能得到更多的教育资源?

A new working paper by Dev Patel of Harvard University and Justin Sandefur of the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank, offers strong evidence that the wealth of a country affects exam results just as much as the wealth of a pupil’s household does.

哈佛大学的戴夫·帕特尔和智库全球发展中心的贾斯汀·桑德福尔在一份最 新的工作报告中有力地证明了，国家财富和家庭财富一样会对一个学生的考试成绩产生巨大的影响。

Evaluating test scores around the world is harder than it sounds. Although pupils in the rich world mostly take one of a few big international exams, many developing countries rely on regional tests. This precludes apples-to-apples comparisons.

评估世界各地的考试成绩听起来容易，实则很难。虽然发达国家的学生大都会参加为数不多的几个大型国际考试中的一个，但许多发展中国家的学生仍只会参加地区性考试。这就很难进行同类比较。

The authors surmounted this obstacle by fielding an exam in 2016 for 2,314 children in Bihar, in northern India. It included both questions from the leading tests and ones taken from smaller exams.

2016年，该研究的作者为印度北部比哈尔邦的2314名儿童组织了一场考试，从而克服着这一障碍。这场考试既包括大考，也包括小测验。

Using answers from the same pupils on the same day to questions from different tests, they built a statistical model they called a “Rosetta Stone”. It can translate scores from a range of exams—such as one used solely in west Africa—into an equivalent mark on other common international tests.

他们利用同一天同一批学生对不同测试问题的回答建立了一个被称为“罗塞塔石碑”的统计模型。该模型可以将一系列考试的分数(比如仅在西非国家使用的考试)转换为其他国际通用考试的等值分数。

Messrs Patel and Sandefur then used these equations to estimate how pupils in 80 different countries would fare on the benchmark Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Their data show that the wealth of a student’s country and family have similar impacts on test scores—meaning that big gaps in GDP per person matter more than small ones in household income do.

接下来，帕特尔和桑德福利用这些换算公式对来自80个不同国家的学生在国际数学和科学研究基准趋势(TIMSS)中的表现进行了估算。他们的数据显示，学生所在国家的财富和家庭财富对考试成绩有着相似的影响——这意味着，相比家庭收入的微小差异，人均GDP的巨大差异对成绩的影响更大。

For example, pupils from families that are very poor by rich-world standards—those earning $5,000 a year (measured in 2005 dollars)—were expected to score around 500 out of 1,000 on the TIMSS in America, and 560 in Japan. In contrast, those whose parents make $10,000 a year in an upper-middle-income country, such as Costa Rica, still manage only the equivalent of a 475.

例如，按照发达国家的标准，就来自非常贫困家庭(以2005年的美元价值衡量，年收入为5000美元的家庭)的学生在TIMSS中的预期分数来说，美国学生为500分，日本学生为560分。相比之下，在哥斯达黎加等中高等收入国家，那些父母年收入达1万美元的孩子在TIMSS中的预期分数仅为475分。

The study also found that the influence of parental earnings is not constant. Instead, an extra $1,000 in family income “buys” a larger increase in test scores in highly unequal countries than it does in ones that split their economic pie more evenly.

研究还发现，父母收入对孩子考试成绩的影响并不是一成不变的。相比财富分配较为平等的国家，在那些高度不平等的国家，家庭年收入每增加1000美元，便可“买到”相对更高的考试分数。

One possible reason is that elites tend to educate their children privately in places where wealth is concentrated, such as Brazil. In contrast, in countries with relatively flat income distributions, like Croatia or Armenia, pupils from different social classes are more likely to attend the same schools. This could reduce the impact of family wealth on test scores.

导致这一现象的原因可能在于，在财富集中的国家(比如巴西)，精英们更倾向于让自己的孩子接受私立教育。相比之下，在收入分配较为平均的国家(比如克罗地亚或亚美尼亚)，来自不同社会阶层的学生更有可能进入同一所学校。这或许会减少家庭财富对孩子考试成绩的有影响。

(红色标注词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

preclude [prɪˈkluːd] vt. 排除;妨碍;阻止

surmount [sərˈmaʊnt] vt. 克服;越过;战胜

obstacle [ˈɑːbstəkl] n. 障碍;干扰;妨碍

benchmark [ˈbentʃmɑːrk] n. 基准