
Where you are born is more predictive of your future than any other factor - betocmn
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2019-report
======
ronnier
I’m extremely lucky, I was raised in projects at an early age in an absolutely
horrible area and went through middle school and high school there (mother
eventually moved out of the projects but in the same city). Random beatings
were common once you neared your teen years, I was physically attacked many
times just because I was white I guess (judging by the racial words said
towards me).

But yeah, most people do not do well in life there, they are stuck in a cycle
of violence, drugs, and other destructive behavior that they never recover
from. It makes absolutely no sense how I was able to make it out and end up
doing very well in life.

I want to help others break free from the cycle of self destruction but it’s
very hard unless you are with them daily.

Anyways, to this day I’m thankful for John Carmack for giving me that spark of
interest in computers.

~~~
michannne
Ah man, you are just like me, except I'm the opposite skin color. Violence in
ghettos knows no bounds, I can't recall how many times as a kid I've had to
look the other way or keep my mouth shut so as to not get killed. At a certain
point you realize the only way to succeed in life is to leave.

I also was inspired by developers like John Carmack and Chris Sawyer, and
fortunately my dad had a Compaq Presario in those days, so I took a love for
programming early. I can remember having to haul a bookbag full of programming
books from the local library, through the ghetto to our apartment, nervous day
that was.

I don't people really understand how much different it is living in the ghetto
vs living in a middle-class area. It is night and day, and anyone can attest
that once you make it out you never want to return if you can help it, and
most fail to appreciate the incredible difficulty of "fixing" an area like
that or even helping someone who refuses to leave

~~~
vowelless
To both of you: seems like you were still born in the US or some western
nation. I would take beatings and ghetto over war any day.

The American ghettos / projects are a solvable issue. It baffles me how such a
relatively easy problem (compared to middle eastern wars) is so hard to fix
for the richest economy on earth. Can you tell me why it is difficult to fix
the projects and ghettos?

~~~
commandlinefan
Well, that’s just the thing - the ghettos _are_ the solution. The problem was
lack of affordable housing, so the government mandated affordable housing. The
result was ghettos, since everybody who had nowhere else to go ended up there.

~~~
baud147258
I remember a discussion with someone who lived in a French equivalent (perhaps
not as bad), at the time those were being constructed (from the 50' to the
70'). At the time, people who started living there were happy, because the
alternative were shantytown/slums. Of course it didn't last, but I found it
interesting to see this viewpoint.

~~~
sjg007
They probably worked well for 10 years. The ghettos in France are pretty bad
right now too. Maybe what was missing was reinvestment in these areas, the
development of services and building out the community. London and the UK have
experimented with transitioning council flats to owner occupied for example.
Gentrification maybe too?

~~~
baud147258
From what I've heard, such areas have received and continue to receive public
money, but it doesn't look like it's working. Or I am wrong and such money
don't exist/go elsewhere (grafts, corruption, public money waste or just area
that aren't too bad). Or the places where it's working aren't those we're
hearing about (the squeaky wheel get the grease and all that).

------
tombert
I was born into a somewhat affluent family, in a somewhat affluent area, and
went to somewhat affluent schools, and unsurprisingly I have a pretty decent
life where I can afford what I want. It was never a question of "if" I get to
go to college, but instead "what college are you going to?", and even though I
dropped out, I was still able to find a decent-paying job in tech.

Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity
into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned all
my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't work
hard enough.

It wasn't until I met my wife, who is smarter than me an also a harder worker,
but was born into a poor family, that I realized how silly my viewpoint was.
Despite being very well-read and intelligent, she was working as a cashier at
McDonalds to help support her mother and sister, living in a more impoverished
suburb of Dallas, TX. It wasn't until we were married that she was able to go
to college.

Even she had it easier than someone born in, say, Uganda, but seeing all this
made me realize that while, yes, I have worked hard to get where I am, I
shouldn't pretend that it was _all_ me.

~~~
theflyinghorse
> Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity
> into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned
> all my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't
> work hard enough.

Do you think that's common for richer folk? That's just mind blowing to me
tbh.

~~~
tombert
I obviously cannot speak for anyone but myself with any kind of certainty, but
I don't think that's a completely uncommon viewpoint. I mean, the whole mantra
of "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" is more or less predicated upon the
idea that your fate is completely up to you.

------
aetherspawn
I don’t like how this article spins that doing housework is like a degenerate
or bad thing for a woman to do. More housework = more inequality. Uh, ok.

It has to be done. That’s how teamwork, works.

~~~
jefe_
Housework in many parts of Africa is hard, grueling work, and the women
perform it from sunrise to sunset every day. Washing clothes without a washing
machine, scrubbing dusty floors, cooking on charcoal stoves. None of these
tasks use ergonomic materials and much of the work occurs very close to the
floor, which creates a lot of up and down movement that strains back and
knees. Coupled with hauling water around from sources up to 300 yards away and
lack of electricity, I would not want that to be my only option in life.

~~~
andrepd
>300 yards

Make that 10 miles.

~~~
kaybe
There must be a very good reason why the village is built that far from water
sources. I have some theories, but does someone have facts?

------
bluedino
The kids you grew up with or were friends in school with highly impact this as
well.

Friends with the weird kid that just ate his boogers all day? You guys are
probably working at McDonalds together. Hang around the stoners that never got
their acts together? You might have ended up the same way.

But if you hung out with the kid who went to college? You might have decided
to go to the same college and maybe got an internship as his dad's company.
Maybe his name was Steve, and you guys took a shared love for electronics and
started your own company.

So think about this when you decide to buy a house, if you have kids. Your
kids neighbors might be the biggest influence on the rest of their lives.
Imagine if you had grown up one town over, or on the other side of the tracks,
but didn't because your mom liked the kitchen layout in the house you grew up
in.

~~~
ljf
I know exactly what you mean- but is it easy for a kid to make a change? I
fell in with certain groups and left others as we either shared an affinity
for things or had very different values. There were some groups or friends
where I put up with differences as I really wanted to be part of the group,
but there were many that just weren't open to me due to my interests and
sensibilities. How much I could have changed those things which were already a
construct of my upbringing, background, social conditioning etc. I do not
know.

I guess what I am saying it, why did person X end up being friends with the
booger eater and not the chess team?

I'll be interested to see how much I can shape the direction and range of my
kids friends - but I doubt they'll listen ;)

~~~
shantly
To the extent that one can affect it, I think it has more to do with selecting
the _entire friend pool_ , not picking individual friends (which obviously
won't work).

The friend pool at Phillips Exeter's got a higher top-end of friend quality
_and_ a higher bottom-end, generally speaking, than your average public
school—the best and worst likely cases for your kids' friend groups are both
"better", probably—to pick an exaggerated example.

We do the same thing when we choose where to live for the public schools. It's
largely about finding better likely friend group outcomes. "Better" kids are
easier to teach and their families are more likely to push them academically,
so a proxy for that is how "good" the school is (test scores, college
readiness, reputation) but it's _kinda sorta_ mostly about the kids with whom
your kids will be hanging out 7-8 hours a day.

------
keiferski
Does anyone else have a problem with an American billionaire deciding which
worldview should be exported to the world? I'm sure the Gates have only the
best intentions, but that doesn't mean that their particular brand of
philanthropy is inherently the best solution to the diverse needs of the
world's extremely disparate population.

~~~
buddylw
We can have a discussion about weather we should have billionaires in the
first place, but Gates is employing his vast resources in an attempt to
improve the world with a humble data-driven approach to reduce suffering in
the world. For that, I'm quite thankful.

~~~
jacquesm
Bill Gates is busy with a decade long PR effort to whitewash his reputation -
successfully. That he does some good along the way is 'collateral upside'.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Would we even be here talking about him if not for his so-called PR efforts? I
think the important point here is that so many billionaires are extremely rich
and fly under the radar. Bill got his money in underhanded ways like basically
all billionaires, yet at least he's out here trying to apply philanthropy
efficiently.

~~~
jacquesm
Fair enough, but at least with the likes of Larry Ellison what you see is what
you get.

------
neogodless
Here we have a data-driven article outlining problems in equality of
opportunity for humans across the globe, some encouraging success stories and
progress, and ambitions to work on fixing scenarios where there's less
success, or the change isn't fast enough. The motivation of such an article
seems clear and obvious - those with the resources, ability, and of course
their own altruistic motivations will have to work on finding and implementing
solutions to the problem, that is, by reducing and removing the barriers that
exist, especially due to geography and gender.

What's much less clear to me are comments about this article that aim to
diminish it, or one-off examples to supposedly refute it. Maybe you disagree
with the article, and if so, provide data-driven sources to provide us with an
alternate perspective that we can evaluate and discuss.

Perhaps you have read about some of the solutions that help accelerate the
move towards equality, and you wish to share them here. Perhaps you have other
suggestions for making the world a better place in our collective future.

~~~
tootie
It feels like the pretty common reaction of downplaying a bad situation in
such a way as to absolve the privileged people of any responsibility. None of
this is the fault of anyone alive today. It's a combination of history,
geography and bad luck. But we can at least acknowledge it's all true.

------
Tade0
I see race* to be a very prominent factor in these charts.

On one hand I would like to agree, but on the other I would like to
respectfully remind my western friends of the existence of eastern
Europe(especially Moldova) and the Balkans, where let's just say that white
privilege is not that apparent.

*dirty word for me personally. There's one race - the human race.

~~~
empath75
Bigotry and colonialism takes many forms. Most people in the us wouldn’t make
a distinction between anybody from Central America once they crossed the
border — they’re all ‘hispanics’, but they have all kinds of problems with
ethnic discrimination in places like Guatemala, using racial distinctions that
most Americans wouldn’t even recognize.

~~~
dqpb
In other words, race as a category is bullshit.

~~~
empath75
It’s bullshit but if people categorize others based on those meaningless
distinctions and act on it, that’s still a problem.

~~~
dqpb
Completely agree

------
bluetomcat
As cynical as it may sound, we are unequal once we are conceived in our
mother's womb. An educated, healthy, grown-up mother has anticipated that
moment with great sentimentality and does her best to ensure the best for the
baby during the whole course of the pregnancy. Neglected, underweight,
malnourished children from less responsible mothers are easy to spot even
during their infant period. This is your real start which determines much of
your mental and physical health for your while life.

Healthy, mentally-stable parents are most likely to have healthy and mentally-
stable kids which is the number one prerequisite for enjoying and succeeding
in life.

~~~
jacquesm
I hope you did not mean to imply that all infants that are underweight,
neglected and malnourished are so because of their moms bad choices. Some
people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still have
children.

~~~
bluetomcat
> Some people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still
> have children.

Sure, but let's not try to pretend that those kids will have an equal start.

~~~
jacquesm
Of course it won't be equal. But that does not make any statement about their
moms.

------
jacquesm
Of course who your daddy is is that other really predictive factor, and Gates
could have been born in the US and be white, having a dad with a couple of
million in the bank surely didn't hurt. It rates a mention in the first
paragraph but it isn't reflected elsewhere in the text or the graphics. And if
it were it would look like Bill started out from the top of a hill and slid
down to the goal of being wealthy rather easily. Of course it was still hard
work, but not more of it and not harder than plenty of others that tried just
as hard but who did not have wealth to start with.

------
wuliwong
The title of this article is "EXAMINING INEQUALITY HOW GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER
STACK THE DECK FOR (OR AGAINST) YOU"

The title of this HN post is the header of one section of this article. It
should be changed to the article's title.

------
babayega2
The article speaks about Chad. A country where the birth rate is around 6
children / woman. I am a developer who comes from a similar country (5.7 c /
w) or we are the second poorest country. One thing we have in common with the
people who grew up in gethos/projets is violence. It pushes us to stop
thinking about what we need beyond surviving... We are wasting time fighting
against diseases, addictions, wars (gethos gangs are small compared to the war
in Chad, Yemen, Middle East!) or peoples who bicker for $ 10 ... because 10
dollars in our countries is about life or death!

Nobody would ever thought that I will be one day (I who was a refugee for 4
years) an experienced developer working internationally... And the funny thing
about all this is that it's UNICEF who gave me this chance [0].

[0]: [https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-
the-...](https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-the-burundi-
lab-and-beyond-a-junior-programmers-story/)

------
wcunning
The bigger question in my mind is how much geography matters inside one
country. For comparison's sake, I think the point of the article works even
better to compare a woman in America to a woman in Saudi Arabia. On the other
hand, it's a bit apples and oranges -- the kingdom explicitly disallows women
to do many things without a man, whereas if there are effects like that in
America still, they're definitely much more subtle than being enacted in law.
So how does the apples to apples comparison work out? Does geography play
nearly as large a role in a country? Does it play as large a role in a
smaller, more homogenous country (Sweden, say) than in America?

~~~
lotsofpulp
The answer is a lot, in the US. That’s because the real predictor is not the
piece of land you were born on, but who your parents are, and what kind of
resources they (and therefore you) have access to. Here’s a nice website
showing data for the US:

[https://www.opportunityatlas.org/](https://www.opportunityatlas.org/)

~~~
non-entity
That was and interesting site, albeit depressing. What I found interesting was
the better outlook for those born in the rural midwest compared to almost all
of the south.

------
Merrill
Americans think progress can fix inequality because we live in a thinly
populated country with lots of resources. In particular, since 1800, mostly
European immigrants converted the economy from hunting/gathering and neolithic
agriculture to modern agriculture.

Most parts of the world for most of history have lived at the Malthusian limit
with diets ranging from lavish to starvation within the society.

------
nickjj
What if you make it past your teens?

Think about all of those people who immigrated to the US in the 60s-70s (born
in the 1940-50s). A lot of them spoke almost no English and did it with almost
no money in their pocket.

But they thrived. There's so many successful small businesses in the US ran by
people of that generation who immigrated (and now their kids). At least in NY.

When you're put into situations like that there's no time to think negatively,
be anxious, depressed or have other issues that plague so many people today.
Your mental health is a big dictator of your future and there's for sure lots
of chemical issues involved but I do think in a decent number of cases your
environment plays a big role -- but in this case, being in an environment of
change / non-extreme comfort from early on (teens and lower) might be an
astronomically sized benefit because it sets you up to think in a different
way for the rest of your life.

~~~
ip26
Unfortunately I don't have anything close to a source handy, but from what I
recall, it turns out many of the successful immigrant businessmen just
happened to be businessmen back in their home country. Or bankers, or doctors,
or lawyers. So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the
US with no money and no English, they did have professional experience &
skills.

~~~
nickjj
> So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the US with
> no money and no English, they did have professional experience & skills.

A lot of them also went straight from the army (forced enrollment) with no
skills or higher education to coming over in their early 20s and then found
their way in business without needing specialized formal education to be
successful (doctors / lawyers, etc.). Lots of food related business, selling
clothes, contracting work, etc..

------
betocmn
Relevant [0]: "The life chances approach suggests that status is not entirely
achieved, but is, to some extent, ascribed. Overall, in societies emphasizing
ascription, opportunity is relatively low and status (in the sense of prestige
in the community) is often inherited. This means that people are, effectively,
given their status as a result of the group into which they are born, rather
than earning it entirely on merit. Ascriptive qualities such as
race/ethnicity, gender, and class of origin can all affect one's life chances.
In all societies parents pass on whatever advantages and disadvantages they
have to their children".

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances)

edit: typo

------
segmondy
This might have been true in the past, but I absolutely no longer believe
this.

What you know, what information you have, the network you have is more
predictive of your future than any other factor. Most of my mistakes in life
have been that of being ignorant, just learning bout something much later in
life. Something that some people had passed on to them by their parents etc,
but I had to discover for myself.

Information is the great equalizer. There are of course folks who get
information but don't act on it. They haven't received the information that
they can move mountains if they stay persistent and act.

------
baalimago
And the more children the U-countries give birth to, the luckier my children
will be. Isn't that funny?

It's like humanity is intentionally making the odds worse for their own
children, and noone is intervening.

------
jamisteven
I find it hilariously patronizing how they explain things in this article, did
they seriously need to mine all this data and do all this research to come to
these so obvious conclusions? Poverty, Lack of healthcare and education, clean
water, the sins of generations and the cycle that proceeds it, its the basis
of every ghetto in the world. Really dont understand what The Gates Foundation
is trying to get across with this piece. He has the power, the means, the
influence to single handedly change the situation in Chad with zero help from
anybody, all they have to do is choose to do it. Yet here we are with all this
data and metrics, was this seriously an "ah-ha!" moment for them?! If so, they
seriously are detached as the 1%.

~~~
AwesomeFaic
Maybe going overboard with research and quantitative statements was an effort
to make it accessible while combating the notion that they might just be the
1% and blaming poverty etc for others' challenges. Not debating their ability
to address these problems directly.

------
d--b
I find it strange that the Gates always talk about lives that are "healthy and
productive". Can't it be "healthy and happy"? Why should anyone seek
productiveness?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Because your material circumstances are a big influence on both your health
and your happiness. If you're going to be materially prosperous, then either
you have to live in a society with generous welfare, or you need well-off
parents, or you need to be productive (and not have what you produce stolen
from you).

------
known
"You are a product of your environment" \--Clement Stone
[http://archive.fo/yPhyn](http://archive.fo/yPhyn)

~~~
toasterlovin
You’re a product of your genes to an equal degree.

------
ngcc_hk
Who give birth to you more in many places. Not where.

------
sgt101
Isn't this a case of driving using the rear view mirror? If we had done this
analysis in 1965 I would bet fair that the biggest challenges would have been
for people born in southern china; governance (your government would kill you
at any moment), nutrition (mass starvation), education (not much of that),
disease (plague, cholera, smallpox)..

The marvel is that China broke the shackles.

------
numeromancer

      We dance round in a ring and suppose,
      But the secret sits in the middle, and knows.

------
mistrial9
is this the same "think tank" that wanted every elementary school child in
America to have standardized, written test scores, maintained in (their)
central database?

------
username90
Not sure why they put Melinda's gender as a handicap, it allowed her to get
things handed to her on a platter by Bill. She is now loved and famous thanks
to spending Bill's money on charity without taking any of the downsides and
hate related to starting a company and fiercely clawing yourself to the top
like Bill did.

I agree that being a woman is a handicap in many situations, but saying that
Melinda had to make more sacrifices to get where she is than Bill is
laughable.

~~~
pdpi
> Not sure why they put Melinda's gender as a handicap, it allowed her to get
> things handed to her on a platter by Bill. She is now loved and famous
> thanks to spending Bill's money on charity without taking any of the
> downsides and hate related to starting a company and fiercely clawing
> yourself to the top like Bill did.

Take that sentiment. Now look at the Foundation, and think: Given that a lot
of their charity work was her initiative, how many of the people she has to
work with saw things from your perspective of "wife spending husband's money",
instead of thinking about her in terms of an entrepreneur with strong
financial backing? Overcoming _that_ is part of the gender handicap at work.

~~~
username90
Creating a charity which mainly spends money you were gifted and creating a
profitable business with invested money are two totally different things.

~~~
pdpi
I think it's perfectly legitimate to describe somebody who initiates and runs
a charity, and who is focused on deploying that gifted money as effectively as
possible, as an entrepreneur. You don't need to be profit-driven, you can have
a different goal altogether.

------
oriettaxx
so, if any wonder why people are ready to risk their life to migrate...

------
RickJWagner
What does this say of the army of homeless in California? Are they just 'doing
it wrong'?

~~~
rco8786
We don’t know where they were born.

But more importantly these studies just prove out that the zip code you are
born in is highly correlated to the socio-economic status of your parents.
Which is the real predictor for future status.

------
mfbx9da4
I don't like how this kind of thinking puts Western life on a pedestal as
better than everywhere else.

~~~
neogodless
The kind of thinking that surviving until you're five, having access to
healthcare and education, being given opportunities based solely on
achievement rather than being deprived of them because of gender or skin
color, that's on a pedestal? That's not "Western life." That's just something
(some of us want) to strive for.

------
atemerev
This is why open migration is: 1) inevitable (people in every country are
becoming well aware about the difference in opportunities and quality of
life), and 2) is a good thing.

------
brosinante
Well, that's a lot of IQ "truthers" in these here comments.

~~~
Based_Detroiter
There is no way of getting around that in terms of IQ, you've got to be very
elitist in picking the people who deserve to write software.

-Bill Gates

------
bryanrasmussen
I seem to remember some story of a dinner party with Gates where he was
bragging his intelligence would have allowed him to rise to the top in
whatever culture he was born into. Can't find a link to the anecdote however
so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.

~~~
madiathomas
Maybe he isn't talking about becoming a dollar billionaire at an early age at
any community. Maybe he is talking top in the context of that community. If he
was born in a remote village of a third world country, maybe he was going to
rise to the top and have more cattle than anyone else, but globally, he was
going to be a successful but an unknown herdman.

Edit: Removed confusing Latin terms.

~~~
MagnumOpus
> persona non grata

That phrase does not mean what you think it means. You're looking for the
words "person of no consequence".

~~~
madiathomas
Sorry. I thought it can also be used for an "insignificant person". I will
avoid Latin terms next time.

------
barking
It must be a great comfort to all the people Bill Gates trod over to see the
great credit he's getting today for giving a little back.

~~~
renjimen
I'm going to guess that you didn't even read the article.

~~~
barking
I'll admit that I didn't read it all but that was at least partly because it
behaved painfully in my browser (chrome on windows 10).

------
luckylion
"Men enroll in college, women don't" "in every single country". And yet in
lots of Western countries, more women enroll in college than men.

I find it weird when articles that claim science make claims that are easily
challenged by widely available and commonly known data.

~~~
goto11
These quotes does not seem to occur in the article?

~~~
luckylion
> Gender inequality cuts across _every single country_ on Earth.

> Boys’ worlds expand [...] and _enroll in high school or college_ or get a
> job.

> girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from
> being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands.

Emphasis mine.

~~~
renjimen
If you measure gender inequality by more than just higher education
enrollment, then yes, woman are disadvantaged across every single country on
Earth:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality)

