Two of the most noticeable versions of the Matthew Effect are the "Absolute" and "Relative" versions.
- The "Absolute" Matthew effect is the more commonly known one; when the party with the resource advantage (the rich) continues to gain more resources, while the party with the resource disadvantage (the poor) continues to lose more resources.
- The "Relative" Matthew effect is more subtle; when *both* parties continue to gain more resources, but the party with the resource advantage compounds their advantage, thus getting further ahead over time.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Matthew Effect describes the phenomenon that in societies the rich tend to get richer and the strong even more powerful. The concept today describes the general pattern of self-reinforcing inequality related to economic wealth, political power, prestige, knowledge or in fact any other scarce or valued resource. 

The Matthew Effect

Daniel Rigney. (2010). The Matthew Effect : How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. Columbia University Press.

The Matthew Effect by Daniel Rigney

The Matthew effect exists in education, in which students seen as low performing  will continue performing at low levels, while high performing students will continue to perform at high levels. 

The Matthew Effect in Education

Absolute and Relative Matthew Effects

- The Matthew Effect by Daniel Rigney
- The Matthew effect in empirical data
- Matthew Effects in Reading: Some Consequences of Individual Differences in the Acquisition of Literacy
-  Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks

The Mathew Effect References

One potential manifestation implies that the environment has a fixed amount of resources. Given that this is the case, the progress made by one party is made at the expense of all the others. This results in an "Absolute" Matthew effect, where the party with the resource advantage gains more because their advantage allows them to take resource from the disadvantaged party more easily.
- A complex example of this are two neighboring towns; a factory shuts down in one and relocates to the other. In doing so, the town that gains the factory gains jobs and affluence, while the town that lost the factory experiences the opposite.

Zero-Sum Matthew Effect

Of the many kinds of achievement gaps that exist in education, there is one in particular between high-income students and low-income students. It has been documented in past and recent studies that high-income students tend to do better than low-income students in education, from test results to completion of college. 

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