The Journal
Should you pay kids for chores? Three things, three rules
Whether to pay children for chores is argued as a question of values, and it is also a measured one. The measurements are unflattering to payment, though not in the way the argument usually runs: what they warn against is putting a price on something that was already being done for nothing.
Three different things all called pocket money
Three arrangements travel under one word.
Membership work is what gets done because you live in the house: your own plate, your own washing, a turn at the bins. Nobody is paid for it, because payment is not the reason it is done.
Contract work is a finite job nobody in particular owes — clearing the garage, washing the car, an afternoon of painting. It has a price, agreed before the work starts.
An allowance is a regular sum meant to put money in a child’s hands for practice — neither a wage nor a prize.
The survey evidence does not separate them. The Money and Pensions Service’s UK Children and Young People’s Financial Wellbeing Survey, run by Critical Research among 4,740 children aged seven to 17 between August and November 2022 and weighted to represent all seven to 17-year-olds in the UK, reports that “just over seven in ten (71%) receive regular money either through pocket money or work”. It asked where the money came from, not what it was for — the same blur that makes the argument hard to settle.
Younger children may not perceive the difference at all. The review David Whitebread and Sue Bingham at Cambridge wrote for the Money Advice Service in 2013 cites Yamamoto and Takahashi’s finding that the financial significance of pocket money “does not become understood until children reach early adolescence”.
What happens when you start paying for something already being done
In 1973 Mark Lepper, David Greene and Richard Nisbett published a field study run at the Bing Nursery School on the Stanford University campus. Children aged 40 to 64 months were watched through a one-way mirror to find those who chose to draw with felt-tipped pens. Some were offered a “Good Player Award” — a gold star and a red ribbon on a card — if they would draw; some drew and got the same award afterwards with no warning; some got nothing.
One to two weeks later the pens went back on the table, in a setting the paper describes as one where the activity “was not associated with the experimenters or any extrinsic reward”. Of the 51 children in the analysis, those who had drawn for a promised award spent 8.59 per cent of their free time at the drawing table; those given an unexpected award spent 18.09 per cent and those who got nothing 16.73 per cent (F = 3.25, df = 2/48, p < .05; planned contrast F = 6.19, p < .025).
The effect has been tested a great deal since, and the aggregate holds. Deci, Koestner and Ryan’s 1999 meta-analysis of 128 experiments in Psychological Bulletin found that expected tangible rewards undermined free-choice persistence with a composite d = −0.36 (95% CI −0.42 to −0.30), and that across tangible rewards generally the effect was larger in children: d = −0.39 (CI −0.47 to −0.32) across 57 tangible-reward studies with children, against −0.27 across 38 with college students. Sweets and toys did no more damage than a certificate.
It is not an undisputed literature, though the dispute is narrower than it sounds. The same paper reviews four earlier meta-analyses and reports that three of them “all concluded that there is substantial support for the general hypothesis”. The outlier is the fourth, Eisenberger, Cameron and Pierce’s, and Deci and colleagues give one reason it came out weaker than theirs: “they included dull tasks” — which matters more here than anything else.
The case for paying, and where it holds
The undermining is confined to things people already wanted to do.
Thirteen studies in that meta-analysis varied how interesting the task was inside the same experiment. Across the eleven with a free-choice measure, rewards on interesting tasks produced d = −0.68 (CI −0.89 to −0.47), while on uninteresting tasks the effect was not significant, d = 0.18 (CI −0.03 to 0.39). The authors’ summary is flat: “the reliable undermining of intrinsic motivation by tangible rewards does not extend to dull-boring tasks.”
Where a household job is genuinely of that second kind — nobody was doing it for its own sake, and nobody in particular owes it — the warning does not apply. That is the narrow place where paying holds.
Lepper and his co-authors said as much. “Certainly there is nothing in the present line of reasoning or the present data to suggest that contracting to engage in an activity for an extrinsic reward will always, or even usually, result in a decrement in intrinsic interest in the activity.” Their activity was attractive and their subjects were, in the paper’s words, “selected on the basis of their relatively great initial interest in the drawing activity”.
What the evidence warns against is the transition: putting a price on something already happening for nothing. Deci and colleagues say reward contingencies undermine “people’s taking responsibility for motivating or regulating themselves”, and that tangible rewards “must be used extraordinarily carefully with children in schools, homes, and elsewhere”. The membership list is what has something to lose.
What English schools are required to teach about money
In England, money is statutory content in two subjects, and they carry different halves of it.
The arithmetic sits in mathematics, from the first year of school. The programme of study, which applies to England and covers key stages 1 to 4, requires pupils in year 1 to be taught to “recognise and know the value of different denominations of coins and notes”; in year 2 to “recognise and use symbols for pounds (£) and pence (p); combine amounts to make a particular value” and to “solve simple problems in a practical context involving addition and subtraction of money of the same unit, including giving change”; and in year 3 to “add and subtract amounts of money to give change, using both £ and p in practical contexts”. At key stage 3 it asks pupils to “develop their use of formal mathematical knowledge to interpret and solve problems, including in financial mathematics” and to solve percentage problems including “simple interest in financial mathematics”; at key stage 4, to “set up, solve and interpret the answers in growth and decay problems, including compound interest”.
What money is for — budgeting, debt, insurance, pensions — sits in citizenship, whose programme of study covers key stages 3 and 4, the secondary years. Published on 11 September 2013, it requires pupils at key stage 3 to be taught “the functions and uses of money, the importance and practice of budgeting, and managing risk”, and at key stage 4 “income and expenditure, credit and debt, insurance, savings and pensions, financial products and services, and how public money is raised and spent”.
The part usually left out is who has to follow any of it. GOV.UK states that “other types of school, like academies and private schools, do not have to follow the national curriculum”, and that academies “must teach a broad and balanced curriculum including English, maths and science”. Citizenship is not on that list.
The exemption is not a technicality. At the January 2025 school census the Department for Education recorded that “83.0% of secondary schools are academies or free schools, accounting for 82.7% of secondary school pupils”. Citizenship is a secondary subject, so the statutory content that deals with budgeting, credit, debt and pensions does not bind most of the schools teaching the relevant ages. The Money and Pensions Service says as much in its own research: “some types of schools - including academies in England – do not need to follow the curriculum, though many use this as the basis of their offer”. In 2022, 32 per cent of seven to 17-year-olds in England recalled learning about money at school and finding it useful; across the UK it was 33 per cent.
That is the position on 20 September 2026. Parliament has legislated to change it: section 54 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, is headed “Academy schools: duty to follow National Curriculum”. The duty it creates is not yet in force. Only the parts of the section conferring power to make regulations commenced at Royal Assent; the duty waits on a day the Secretary of State appoints by regulations, and none had been appointed by 20 September 2026.
One popular claim deserves care. That money habits are set by the age of seven comes from a literature review, not a longitudinal study: Whitebread and Bingham write that “by the age of seven years, several basic concepts relating broadly to later ‘finance’ behaviours will typically have developed” — counting, equivalence, exchange, a rough idea of earning. Cognitive furniture in place, not habits fixed.
Docking pocket money for jobs not done
Docking is where families end up when paying stops working.
When a payment depends on performance, some children fall short of it. Deci, Koestner and Ryan measured that situation, in studies of children and adults together: across six studies, once an outlier was dropped, people in a performance-contingent reward condition who received less than the maximum showed “larger undermining of free-choice intrinsic motivation (d = −0.88) than did people in any other reward or reward-contingency group we examined”; the seven-study composite before the drop is d = −0.80. Falling short of a promised payment is more damaging than the payment itself.
The next point is an argument rather than a finding. A deduction puts a price on the job, and a price can be paid: a child who would rather keep the hour than the pound has been told, accurately, what declining costs.
The version that survives: two lists and one standing amount
Write two lists and keep them apart.
The first is the membership list: the jobs done because you live here. Short enough to be real, specific enough to be checked, and — where a child holds it — cut to a size they can carry without being prompted through it, which is a matter of counting a job’s unprompted steps rather than the child’s birthdays; “Age-appropriate chores by age: count the steps, not the years”, elsewhere on this site, works that through. Nothing on the list is paid and nothing on it is docked. If it stops being done, that is a conversation about the household, not an adjustment to a balance.
The second is the contract list: finite jobs nobody owes, priced before the work and paid on completion. Clearing the garage belongs there; putting your own plate in the dishwasher does not. The evidence above is about what happens when something already done for nothing acquires a price. Moving a job from the first list to the second is easy. Moving it back is the experiment.
Then the allowance, which hangs on neither list: a regular amount paid on a fixed day, not conditional on the membership jobs and not a substitute for contract work. In the same meta-analysis, rewards not contingent on the task — the authors’ example is “paying people a salary for occupying a job” — showed no significant effect, d = −0.14 (CI −0.39 to 0.11) across seven free-choice studies. Set it at a figure you can still pay in a bad month: a judgement rather than a finding, but an amount that stops when money is short was conditional after all.
Then let them spend it. The home half of the Money and Pensions Service’s national goal takes three things together — regular money from parents or work, parents setting rules about money, and responsibility for some spending decisions. In 2022, 91 per cent of UK children aged seven to 17 had some responsibility for how their own money was spent, but only 35 per cent of their parents and carers rated themselves 8 or more out of 10 on setting clear money rules they stick to, and 24 per cent of the children had all three.
No amount appears in this piece. One published index, now in its tenth year, draws on “the earning, saving and spending habits of over half a million Rooster Card users” — the customers of a children’s prepaid card app, which is a self-selected population rather than a national sample.
Sources
- Carries the whole of section 2’s first two paragraphs and the two quotations in section 3 about the study’s limits. PDF opened with WebFetch on 20 September 2026 and its text extracted and read the same day. Field experiment at the Bing Nursery School on the Stanford University campus; subjects “ranging in age from 40 to 64 months”; the target activity was “multicolored felt-tipped drawing pens (‘magic markers’)”; base-line interest was observed “from behind a one-way mirror”; 55 children “actually participated in the experiment (19 each in the expected- and unexpected-award conditions, 17 in the no-award control group)” and “The final sample, then, consisted of 51 children”, which is the number the piece uses. The award is described as “colored 3X5 inch cards with the words ‘Good Player Award’ … next to a large gold star and a red ribbon”. The follow-up: “The target-drawing activity was again introduced into the children’s classrooms 1-2 weeks after the experimental sessions”, giving “an unobtrusive measure … in a situation in which the activity was not associated with the experimenters or any extrinsic reward” — the phrase section 2 now quotes instead of the flat assertion that nobody mentioned awards. Table 1 gives mean percentage of free-choice time as 8.59 (n = 18 expected award), 16.73 (n = 15 no award) and 18.09 (n = 18 unexpected award); Table 2 gives F = 3.25, df 2/48, p < .05 and the contrast F = 6.19, df 1/48, p < .025. Both section 3 quotations are verbatim: “Certainly there is nothing in the present line of reasoning or the present data to suggest that contracting to engage in an activity for an extrinsic reward will always, or even usually, result in a decrement in intrinsic interest in the activity”, and “subjects were selected on the basis of their relatively great initial interest in the drawing activity”. (This URL is the copy hosted at MIT; the version of record is J Pers Soc Psychol 28(1), 129–137.) — Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E., “Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the ‘overjustification’ hypothesis”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129–137, 1973
- Carries every effect size in sections 2, 3, 5 and 6, and the replication-status statement. PDF opened with WebFetch on 20 September 2026, text extracted and every figure below read in place the same day. Abstract: “A meta-analysis of 128 studies examined the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation.” Confidence intervals are 95%: “Each calculation of d+ provides both a test of whether the value differs significantly from 0.00 and a 95% confidence interval (CI).” Expected tangible rewards, free choice: “The set of 92 expected-tangible-rewards studies yielded a composite d = −0.36 (CI = −0.42, −0.30)”. The age split is reported for tangible rewards in general and not for that expected-tangible subset, which is how section 2 states it: “an analysis of age effects for all tangible rewards taken together did reveal a significant difference, Qb(1) = 4.18, p < .04. For 57 tangible-reward studies of free-choice behavior with children, the composite d = −0.39 (CI = −0.47, −0.32), and for 38 with college students, the composite d = −0.27 (CI = −0.36, −0.19).” Concrete versus symbolic rewards for children, which carries “Sweets and toys did no more damage than a certificate”: concrete rewards “such as toys or candy” against symbolic rewards “such as a ‘good player’ certificate”, “There were no differences”, 28 concrete studies d = −0.44 (CI −0.54, −0.33) and 15 symbolic studies d = −0.42 (CI −0.57, −0.27), Qb(1) = 0.03, ns. Interesting versus dull tasks: “We found 13 studies that experimentally manipulated interest level of the task”; “For the 11 studies with a free-choice measure … The composite effect for interesting tasks showed significant undermining, d = −0.68 (CI = −0.89, −0.47), and for uninteresting tasks did not show a significant effect, d = 0.18 (CI = −0.03, 0.39)”, concluding that “the reliable undermining of intrinsic motivation by tangible rewards does not extend to dull-boring tasks.” Task-noncontingent rewards: “The 7 studies of task-noncontingent rewards with a free-choice measure yielded a nonsignificant composite d = −0.14 (CI = −0.39, 0.11)”, and the salary example is theirs: “paying people a salary for occupying a job”. Less than maximum performance-contingent reward, for section 5: “For 7 studies of less-than-maximum rewards (signifying less than optimal performance) compared with no-feedback controls, there was significant undermining, d = −0.80 (CI = −1.03, −0.57) … When the Karniol and Ross (1977) study was dropped as an outlier … the composite d was −0.88 (CI = −1.12, −0.65)”, with Figure 1 printing that row as k = 6, and the discussion carrying the quoted clause “larger undermining of free-choice intrinsic motivation (d = −0.88) than did people in any other reward or reward-contingency group we examined”. The paper names Pittman et al. (1977), T. W. Smith and Pittman (1978) and Weiner and Mander (1978) as undergraduate studies within that subset and gives no age breakdown for it, which is why section 5 says “in studies of children and adults together” rather than presenting −0.88 as a finding about children. Practical instruction: “reward contingencies undermine people’s taking responsibility for motivating or regulating themselves”, and tangible rewards “must be used extraordinarily carefully with children in schools, homes, and elsewhere so as not to negatively affect their intrinsic motivation”. The dispute reported in section 2 is this paper’s own account: the abstract says the authors “review 4 previous meta-analyses of this literature”; the review’s summary says “Three previous meta-analyses that focused on somewhat different issues all concluded that there is substantial support for the general hypothesis”; the fourth is the Cameron and Pierce (1994) / Eisenberger and Cameron (1996) analysis, which the paper itself calls “Eisenberger, Cameron, and Pierce” and says “arrived at conclusions quite discrepant from those of the other three”; and the dull-task attribution is made about that one analysis: “one reason that Eisenberger, Cameron, and Pierce’s results were weaker than ours is that they included dull tasks.” (Copy hosted at the University of Baltimore; version of record Psychological Bulletin 125(6), 627–668.) — Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M., “A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation”, Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668, 1999
- Carries every UK survey figure in sections 1, 4 and 6, and the MaPS statement about academies in section 4. The URL is corrected in this revision: the capture timestamp cited before (20230825195737) is not the capture that is served, and on 20 September 2026 the request resolved to the 20240719112152 capture printed here, which was opened, downloaded and read in full that day. Technical summary: “The 2022 wave was conducted by Critical Research amongst 4,740 children and young people using a mixed methodology approach”, 3,766 by quota-based online panel and 974 recruited face to face from randomly sampled address lists; “The 2022 data collection period occurred between 18th August 2022 and 6th November 2022”; “Weighting has been employed to ensure the overall reported population is representative of all young people aged seven to 17 in the UK.” Key findings: “just over seven in ten (71%) receive regular money either through pocket money or work”, base 4,740; “most children (91%) having some responsibility about how they spend their money”, question CYP8b, base 4,740; “only around a third of parents/carers (35%) say they set rules about how their child’s money is spent”, whose underlying item is footnoted as “P12c - I set clear rules or agreements for my child about money that I stick to? Base: All parents or carers (4740) rating 8-10 out of 10”, which is why section 6 states it as a self-rating out of ten. School recall: Chart 11, “Recall of learning about managing money in school considered useful by nation and education stage”, gives for ages 7 to 17 All UK 33% and England 32%, base 4,740; section 4 is about England throughout, so it gives the England figure with the UK figure beside it. Home measure: “24% (-1% since 2019) Received key elements of financial education at home”, defined in the report as children who “receive regular money from parents or work, and their parents set rules about money, and give them responsibility for some spending decisions” — the wording section 6 follows. Context section: “In England, financial education is on the national curriculum for secondary schools only” and “some types of schools - including academies in England – do not need to follow the curriculum, though many use this as the basis of their offer.” The first of those two sentences is about financial education as a named subject and is not used in the piece; the second is quoted in section 4. maps.org.uk refuses automated requests, so this URL is the UK Government Web Archive capture. — Money and Pensions Service, “UK Children and Young People’s Financial Wellbeing Survey: Financial Foundations”, June 2023 (UK Government Web Archive capture), 2023
- Source for the statutory citizenship content quoted in section 4’s third paragraph. Key stage 3 subject content: pupils should be taught about “the functions and uses of money, the importance and practice of budgeting, and managing risk”. Key stage 4: “income and expenditure, credit and debt, insurance, savings and pensions, financial products and services, and how public money is raised and spent”. The document is titled for key stages 3 and 4, is marked “Applies to England” and is dated Published 11 September 2013 with no later update shown. It says nothing about academies and nothing about where else money is taught, which is why the academy exemption is cited to the separate GOV.UK page and the primary-school arithmetic to the mathematics programmes of study. Opened with WebFetch and read on 20 September 2026. — Department for Education, “National curriculum in England: citizenship programmes of study for key stages 3 and 4”, GOV.UK, 2013
- Restored in this revision, and the source for every mathematics requirement quoted in section 4’s second paragraph. A previous repair cut the mathematics sentence and dropped this source, which left the section implying that statutory money teaching is confined to citizenship and to the secondary years; it is not. Opened with WebFetch on 20 September 2026 and the statutory text read in place the same day. The publication page gives Published 11 September 2013, Last updated 28 September 2021, Applies to England, and “The statutory programmes of study and attainment targets for mathematics at key stages 1 to 4.” Under Measurement, year 1 programme of study: “recognise and know the value of different denominations of coins and notes”. Year 2: “recognise and use symbols for pounds (£) and pence (p); combine amounts to make a particular value” and “solve simple problems in a practical context involving addition and subtraction of money of the same unit, including giving change”. Year 3: “add and subtract amounts of money to give change, using both £ and p in practical contexts”. Key stage 3, under Solve problems: “develop their use of formal mathematical knowledge to interpret and solve problems, including in financial mathematics”; and under Ratio, proportion and rates of change: “solve problems involving percentage change, including: percentage increase, decrease and original value problems and simple interest in financial mathematics”. Key stage 4, under Ratio, proportion and rates of change: “set up, solve and interpret the answers in growth and decay problems, including compound interest {and work with general iterative processes}” — the braces mark content for more highly attaining pupils, so the piece quotes only the part in standard type. These are requirements on the schools that must follow the national curriculum; the exemption in the next paragraph applies to them as it does to citizenship. — Department for Education, “National curriculum in England: mathematics programmes of study”, GOV.UK, 2013
- Source for the academy and free school exemption quoted in section 4: “Other types of school, like academies and private schools, do not have to follow the national curriculum”, and “Academies must teach a broad and balanced curriculum including English, maths and science. They must also teach relationships and sex education, and religious education” — a list that does not include citizenship, which is the basis for the sentence that follows it in the piece. Maths is on that list, but the duty named there is to teach the subject, not to follow the national curriculum programme of study for it, which is why the piece draws no wider conclusion from the arithmetic. No last-updated date is displayed, so the piece dates the position to the day the page was read. Opened with WebFetch and both quotations confirmed word for word on 20 September 2026. — GOV.UK, “The national curriculum”, 2026
- Source for the scale of the exemption in section 4: “83.0% of secondary schools are academies or free schools, accounting for 82.7% of secondary school pupils.” Accredited official statistics for the 2024/25 academic year, collected at the January 2025 school census and released on 5 June 2025; the page also shows Last updated 25 September 2025. The release gives no equivalent primary-school figure in this statement, so the piece uses it only for the secondary claim it supports. Opened with WebFetch and read on 20 September 2026. — Department for Education, “Schools, pupils and their characteristics, Academic year 2024/25”, Explore education statistics, 2025
- Source for the pending change to that exemption, in section 4’s sixth paragraph. Section 54 is headed “Academy schools: duty to follow National Curriculum” and amends the Academies Act 2010 so that an Academy’s curriculum must be balanced and broadly based and “includes the National Curriculum”. The Act is 2026 c. 21; its introduction page gives Royal Assent as 29 April 2026. The status note printed on section 54 reads “S. 54 in force at Royal Assent for specified purposes, see s. 78(1)(a)”, and section 78(1)(a) commences on the day the Act is passed “any provision of or amendment made by Part 1 or 2, so far as it confers or relates to a power to make … regulations”. The piece therefore says “the duty it creates is not yet in force” rather than the flat “it is not in force” of the previous draft, which contradicted that note; the section is partly in force, the duty is not. Section 54 is not among the sections listed in section 78(2), which come into force two months after Royal Assent (ss. 5, 22, 31, 36, 51, 55, 56, 58, 59 and Schedule 3 other than paragraph 6, 60 and 61), nor in the Welsh and Scottish lists in subsections (3) and (4), so it falls to subsection (5): “Subject to subsections (1) to (4), this Act comes into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument appoint.” The contents page states the Act “is up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 20 September 2026” and records one commencement instrument, S.I. 2026/803, bringing in sections 4, 8 and 9 — not section 54. Sections 54 and 78, the introduction page and the contents page all opened with WebFetch and read on 20 September 2026. — Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (c. 21), sections 54 and 78, legislation.gov.uk, 2026
- Source for the two Whitebread and Bingham statements in sections 1 and 4, and the basis for describing the document as a literature review rather than a longitudinal finding. The URL is corrected in this revision: the capture timestamp cited before (20230825195737) is not the capture that is served, and on 20 September 2026 the request resolved to the 20230827065101 capture printed here, which was opened, downloaded and read in full that day. The title page reads “Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children, Dr. David Whitebread and Dr. Sue Bingham, University of Cambridge”, and the back page “© Money Advice Service May 2013”; the report is a synthesis of published developmental research. It states: “By the age of seven years, several basic concepts relating broadly to later ‘finance’ behaviours will typically have developed”, and then lists counting, the concept of ‘equals’, exchange and equivalence, and ‘earning’ and ‘income’ — it does not say habits are fixed. On pocket money: “Yamamoto and Takahashi (2008) found that the financial significance of ‘pocket money’ (i.e. a grant of money) does not become understood until children reach early adolescence. Younger children especially are unlikely to understand an allowance as a form of wage, although they become aware that adults work for payment (a ‘wage’).” The review also says small jobs around the home for pocket money “may be a method of adults bringing to life for children the concept of ‘earning’ money” — a possibility, not a finding, and so not used as one. — Whitebread, D., & Bingham, S., “Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children”, University of Cambridge, for the Money Advice Service, May 2013 (UK Government Web Archive capture), 2013
- Cited only to establish the provenance of the pocket-money averages the piece declines to print, in the closing paragraph of section 6. The release, dated 30 June 2026, describes its index as “Based on the earning, saving and spending habits of over half a million Rooster Card users across the UK” — the customer base of a children’s prepaid card and allowance app. It sets out no sampling frame, no weighting and no claim to be nationally representative. No figure from it is used anywhere in this piece, including its average weekly amount and its share of children doing chores for pocket money. The headline reads “NatWest Rooster Money’s 10th Annual Pocket Money Index”, which is what supports “now in its tenth year” in section 6. Nothing on the page claims the index is the best known, the biggest or the longest-running in the UK, and no other source was found for such a ranking, so that description is not made. Opened with WebFetch and read on 20 September 2026. — NatWest Group, press release, “Mow Money, No Problems: ‘Great Out-Chores’ Boost Kids’ Pay Packets According to NatWest Rooster Money’s 10th Annual Pocket Money Index”, 2026
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