
In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life - tokenadult
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/22/metro_area_mobility_where_you_re_born_drives_how_far_you_go.html
======
jurassic
In the white trash southern town where I grew up being a teacher at $35k/yr is
considered one of the better jobs available. Military service is the best
option for young men who want to provide a living wage to their families,
especially since no education is required. A few dozen doctors and dentists
and veterinarians make bank and live like kings (not really joking... think
giant sailboats docked at their beach mansions with 4 car garages), but a big
part of the problem is that there is no middle class. There's a huge chasm
between $35k and $350k, with no opportunities. In a community that is that
poor even entrepreneurship seems like an impossible choice. How can you make
money in that community when nobody has got 2 pennies to rub together?

Another problem is that the culture does not value those things which empower
young people to rise. Even among the top 5% of my high school class, I knew
people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state
university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their
church, or needed to stay home to help care and provide for members of their
family. It's traditional and tribal, and looking off toward the horizon and
going away for fancy schooling just doesn't rank highly on most peoples'
priorities. In a community where many kids' parents attended the same high
schools and the grandparents are local, wanting to leave is considered odd.

The only reason I'm not still there today is that for some reason, as a nerd
and social outcast, I rejected that path from an early age and my top priority
out of high school was to get the hell out. School was hell, but I consider
myself fortunate not to be working minimum wage jobs and living in a trailer
park like two of my siblings.

~~~
ambiate
Growing up in Hattiesburg, MS, innovation was stagnant. There were no
technology related jobs other than Tech Support at Comcast(who I regarded as
pure evil at the time).

People do not want to leave Hattiesburg. It is completely foreign to them.
They want to marry young, have children, and stay within a few blocks of their
family.

Move to California? You're going to fall into the ocean. Move to New York? Too
much city. Move to Texas? Too hot. Each of those arguments is easily debunked.
The humidity makes it hotter in MS.

My life changing moment was taking a Greyhound to Wisconsin with $1,000 and
starting my life over. Afterwards, I moved from place to place knowing I could
make it where ever I ventured to.

I have female friends in MS who got Masters/Ph.Ds and married the same year
they got the piece of paper. Never used it once. It saddens me. Some of those
people are brilliant beyond my abilities. Yet, they chose to follow the
culture of the community.

People are so miserable there, but it all by choice. My mother had cerebral
palsy and received a check for $500/month. We lived in a trailer, and I made
it out when I was ~21-23. I had no car, fallback, or family to depend on. I
just had to take a risk and go with the flow. It pays off well now.

I have offered people from MS jobs here or connections to jobs here. They
would never take that bus.

~~~
narrowingorbits
This attitude--which I more often than not share with you--suffers strongly of
confirmation bias and a lack of empathy. You, we, tend to believe that the
priorities we've chosen are better than those of everyone else, and are
obviously so. Pursuing knowledge, technology, wealth, is of course a higher
aim than raising a family. It's obvious, right? But it's not. They choose "to
follow the culture of the community" because the culture is important to them.
Because, perhaps, success, to them is made up of different things than it is
for us.

~~~
ambiate
I can really appreciate this opinion of my comment. It is truly genuine and a
great analysis! There is much more truth to your words than I would like to
admit in other facets of my life.

Their priority is indeed far from mine. Many times, I find it hard to
empathize and easier to just point the finger at the obvious choices they have
made.

Yet, there is a community type punishment and resentment for people who fall
into these traps of life. Prioritize reproduction over stability. OK!
Community rules: 1) Don't come to 'us' for handouts. 2) Don't get on
welfare/medicaid because you dug yourself into a hole. 3) Don't fall into the
great apathy device of drugs to help you forget.

If you break the rules, you will be shamed and feel guilty.

The glorious church folk at the Southern Baptist Church in Oak Grove began the
silent treatment on my family due to my great grandmother utilizing the meals
on wheels services in the area.

Poorness is not acceptable, in some of the poorest communities of the US. It
is absolutely glorious.

There is just so much more than I could hope to explain in a comment. The
racism, classism, politics, and circular ideologies that are passed down in
those areas is a novel on its own.

You are correct. I pity their choice, and often feel my choices are superior.
Yet, more often than not, they also pity their choices, and envy my choices.

~~~
narrowingorbits
And I guess that's the important dichotomy here. There are many, many choices
that people can make in life that are qualitatively neutral. For instance, the
decision of those female Ph.D.s to value marriage over a career utilizing
their education. It saddens you, because it does not mesh with your
priorities, and so it seems like a bad choice. But qualitatively, it's just a
difference of taste and preference.

But there are certainly choices that are qualitatively worse. Such as
building, or letting yourself be dragged down by communities that destroy you
with shame, racism, classism, politics, etc. Or, as you pointed out, the
choice to ignore the imperative to create a foundation for one's family, to
have some way to provide, if family is your priority. Because that is actually
a failure of their own priorities as well.

We've just got to not muddle those types of choices too much. Our preferences
vs. other's preferences vs. truly damaging choices.

------
saosebastiao
I deleted a previous comment because I didn't accurately convey my thoughts,
but I'm hoping this is more accurate.

My hometown is one of the cheapest, yet most uneducated and violent cities in
all of California. There was a huge class divide amongst my peers, none of
whom were rich; Some could afford to move elsewhere, and others couldn't. Of
those that couldn't, I would say approximately 20-30% are in prison, and the
rest are stuck in <$10/hr jobs probably for the rest of their lives.

Of those who could move elsewhere (not rich, mind you, just well-to-do enough
to move to a different city in CA, like say Sacramento or San Bernadino), most
have decent middle class blue collar jobs (~$40k). About 10% of the group that
was better off ended up going to college, and I would count myself amongst
maybe 5 people (out of a class of ~400) that have truly jumped class barriers.

When you can only afford to live in one place, you are limited by the options
of that one place. Even tiny increments in income/wealth open up exponentially
greater opportunities, for the sole reason that they allow you to move
elsewhere. For this reason, I concur 100% with Yglesias' theory: Housing
regulation and laws, which have a disproportionate effect on housing
affordability, are a huge impediment to class mobility.

Seattle, I hope you shape up before you turn into San Francisco. Thankfully, I
can afford to live here, but my presence in Seattle is crowding out people
that are _exactly like me from 2-3 years ago_. Accommodate them and build new
housing, or you will cause their demise.

~~~
kyllo
Unfortunately, the big reason why Seattle is getting so expensive is just
because there are lucrative jobs to be had here. Same reason why Silicon
Valley is so expensive, but still on a smaller scale at this point. I think
we're going to see more and more of this: the cities with a lot of jobs
getting very expensive to live in, and the cities with fewer job opportunities
staying flat or even getting cheaper--because their economies are dying.

So, unless your income is _very_ high, to avoid having your income canceled
out by the local costs, you will either need to find a rare high-paying job in
a low-jobs, low-cost city, or find rare low-cost housing in a high-jobs, high-
cost city.

Not that this isn't already the case--just saying, I think America's "jobless
recovery" is going to make this effect more extreme in the near future.

~~~
saosebastiao
_But it doesn 't have to be that way_.

Seattle has a lot of high paying jobs, sure. But because Seattle artificially
restricts housing supply, the high paying jobs bring in people like me that
can absorb the cost, pushing out people that can't absorb the cost. Those
people tend to work in jobs _that keep other living costs low_ , meaning that
if they continue to exist at all, they exist at higher prices...exacerbating
the effect.

Seattle needs to stop focusing on raising pay. Their focus on wages for
Airport workers and Fast Food workers completely misses the point: Those wages
are already high from a US market standpoint...they are too low _here_ because
living costs are too high _here_. If you set a wage floor, the employers
disappear. Alaska Airlines will move their hub to Portland or Vancouver, and
all the Fast Food chains will cut their losses and close shop.

A focused effort on destroying barriers to new housing development effectively
reduces the cost of living and increases living standards for everybody,
without pricing out the lower-wage employment.

~~~
kyllo
_But because Seattle artificially restricts housing supply, the high paying
jobs bring in people like me that can absorb the cost, pushing out people that
can 't absorb the cost_

I do know that the pace of new housing construction in the Seattle metro area
is very low, and last winter the housing supply on the market hit its lowest
level since late 90s dot-com boom. Now I don't know if this is truly due to
artificial/legal/zoning restrictions as you say, or if it's just due to the
geography and the fact that the areas within reasonable commuting distance of
Seattle are pretty well built out already--or some combination of both. But
the fact is, people are moving here much faster than we are building housing
for them, and it's pushing up prices very fast.

------
wf
I'm sure some of you saw it because it's on page two (and linked in the
article)-- but the New York Times has imo a much better article on this:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-
incom...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-
ladder-location-matters.html?hp&_r=0)

~~~
anishkothari
Thanks for linking to the NYT article, much better than the Slate one.

IMO access to efficient public transportation has an outsized impact on
people's ability to move up the economic ladder.

~~~
twoodfin
How does that theory jibe with some of the best mobility results being
concentrated in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and North Texas?

~~~
wf
I'm not an economist but I do wonder if the reasons some of those places have
higher mobility is because the previous generation in those areas have
relatively low income jobs (i.e. mostly agriculture) and many of the current
generation have a "gotta get out of here" mentality leading them to better
paying opportunities elsewhere. I know I felt that way living in the mid-west
in early high school.

I'd like to see a map of how many of these income reporters moved away from
their locales and to where and also what professions they picked up.

~~~
twoodfin
The mobility those regions demonstrate is better than average for all income
classes, and those income classes are defined nationally, not locally.

Of course, that "gotta get out of here" feeling isn't limited to lower income
kids, so it could be a factor. Certainly it's typically good for your earnings
if you're willing to move where you can make more money. But then why isn't
upstate New York dark blue? (Sorry, upstate New York!)

------
tokenadult
I think the article's headline point is true for me in one odd way. I grew up
in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, and by chance the school district where I
grew up had mandatory foreign language instruction (German) for all elementary
school pupils in grades four, five, and six. (One member of the district staff
was a German refugee who came over to the United States after World War II.
She set up German classes delivered over the Twin Cities educational TV
station, now a PBS affiliate station, and at the appointed hour, television
sets in elementary classrooms all over the school district were tuned to her
instructional programs. I think the school district also made an effort to
hire new elementary teachers who had had some German during their higher
education.)

My German is _nicht so gut,_ but this early exposure to foreign language study
(few Americans begin study of a second language before secondary school) got
me started in the process of understanding what it takes to learn another
language. Our school district had the usual mix of French, Spanish, or more
German in junior high (I continued with German, a heritage language in my
family) and added Russian in senior high, which I took. So when I went into
university and tried out the Chinese major program, I was sufficiently
successful to keep going in that major subject. Quite a few of my classmates
from my school district studied interesting languages like Arabic and ancient
Nahuatl and linguistics while in university, and several aspired to become,
and at least one became, foreign service officers. So in this simple manner a
difference in the local schools in my town propelled the mobility to new
places of many of the alumni.

~~~
minimax
_few Americans begin study of a second language before secondary school_

Are you sure about that? I grew up in Texas and I remember taking Spanish in
elementary school.

~~~
vinbreau
I went to school in S.E. Texas. We had French and Spanish in high school,
nothing else. The French class was solid, but the Spanish class was lame, all
we did was crossword puzzles and word exercises. I took it for two years and
did not learn the language due to the poor instruction. I knew schools in the
bigger nearby cities sometimes had German, but not my school. Also, the
foreign languages were not mandatory classes. There was no incentive or push
to learn a second language, most adults in my area thought it was useless and
that students should be focusing on agriculture and not foreign languages. As
such my high school had: Agriculture, Horticulture, Cosmetology, Auto-Shop,
Animal Husbandry, landscaping.. but no focus on foreign languages or science
beyond the basics.

------
beat
As someone born in the bottom fifth who worked up into the top fifth, a big
part of it is actively escaping childhood culture and that culture's
expectations. When I grew up, I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful - I
met them when I was an adult. Good role models are critical for kids' sense of
scope and possibility.

Then again, as a political liberal, I tend to say an un-liberal thing when
talking about income distribution... income isn't distributed evenly, but
neither is talent. Mediocre people don't advance society. They tend to stay
where they started (which explains a lot of management mediocrity - some are
born into positions of privilege, but lack the talent to do anything with it
but maintain the status quo). The way to maximize success for society as a
whole is to maximize the opportunity of its most talented members, by
eliminating cultural and social barriers to success.

~~~
bane
> As someone born in the bottom fifth who worked up into the top fifth, a big
> part of it is actively escaping childhood culture and that culture's
> expectations. When I grew up, I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful - I
> met them when I was an adult. Good role models are critical for kids' sense
> of scope and possibility.

I don't think I could have said it better. I too grew up relatively poor, in a
hick area 30 minutes outside of the nearest white trash town, lumber yard,
dying steel mill and trailer park.

I never even conceived that I would be able to obtain the life I have now, not
even by half. Outside of my school teachers, I knew exactly one person with a
college degree (my father) who spent most of his life dealing with family
members who attacked him for having one ("so Mr. College, do you want to join
us for a family dinner, or are you too good for it?" was a common thread). The
available options to me were so limited, and going elsewhere involved so much
more money than I had, it was inconceivable that I would have a life other
than what I had seen.

I managed to pull myself up just enough to realize I didn't want to work low-
paid hourly jobs and drive discount used cars for the rest of my life and
enrolled in the local Community College to try and learn a trade.

As it so happens, my wife grew up in a newly wealthy family (her almost
entirely uneducated father made a boat load during a housing boom in his
native country), and simply "knew" how to operate in the upper-middle class. I
met her while she was studying English at the same College as an international
student (with the insane international student tuition paid for out of her own
pocket). She simply had the cognitive tools to know how to make good money
management decisions, how to buy things and haggle for good value, how to
represent herself (even as a foreigner) so she'd end up paying the middle-
class price for things instead of the poor person's price for things (one of
the first lessons I learned, turns out it's cheaper to be richer):

An example:

I grew up where everyone around me bought used cars, some junk, some okay, all
had expensive maintenance issues within the first year or two...but it's just
what people did. The redneck with 20 cars in his yard? That's because he
figures he can by 3 cars at $100 a piece and cannibalize (with hundreds of his
own labor hours on top of any extra parts he needs to buy) them to make one
good car he can drive for a couple months.

My wife was able to demonstrate that people like my parents, were spending _on
average_ , much more per mile over the life of their used car than we would if
we bought a cheap new car with a reputation for high reliability. I still
drive that same car 11 years later. My current cost per mile, even with high
gas prices, is something like $.18 a mile. My parents spend something like
$.50-.60 per mile.

And on and on and on. It was an entirely new way of looking at the world that
simply never occurred to me or it appears anybody else around me.

Recently, one of my old friends from my hometown was up in a fit that a sweet
lease he has on a basement apartment is going to be up in 2 years. This was a
problem because he couldn't figure out how to afford the higher rental price
that the market had gone to in the last 5 years and thought he might have to
move out of state (another strange compunction I'll get to in a minute). I
asked him, "wouldn't you be making more money via raises or a new job by
then?". "I'm not qualified to get any of the jobs around here, the closest one
I could find required at least an Associates Degree or a Certification."

So given a 2 year lead, it never occurred to him that he could simply solve
his entire issue by getting some education or a couple of quick certificates
out of the way. Worse, and I've found this as very common where I come from,
pointing out these simple facts generates lots of very aggressive resistance.

The other strange obsession I've found is the "solution" some find in poor
areas or "chasing expenses down". This means that, stuck in a job that's paid
the same for the last 10 years, and costs rising, they can no longer afford to
stay in their home areas. So the solution is to move to an area that has a
lower cost of living -- of course without regard for the lack of jobs.

They try and and "chase" down expenses. This is of course opposite of moving
to an expensive city, making much more money only to have it gobbled up by
very high living expenses...except in an expensive city, the opportunity to
keep moving up ahead of the rising expense curve actually exists. You can't
chase down expenses forever, eventually you find yourself in an area with no
jobs and miles and miles of endless 4th hand trailer homes and no opportunity
to chase expenses down even further.

Being poor without access to what people with money actually _do_ with their
money (and how they come about that money) is very very hard for a young
person to figure a way out of on their own. It's why poverty is systemic in
many areas and the examples that are shown: boxers, basketball players, drug
dealers, etc. are the ones kids gravitate towards because that's all they can
see.

~~~
jurassic
> pointing out these simple facts generates lots of very aggressive
> resistance.

This, a thousand times, even from my own family. I've simply stopped trying to
give advice.

~~~
bane
I've had to make a personal rule to not get involved in anybody's life from
where I grew up. It's simply too depressing watching them struggle with bad
life-choice after bad life-choice, and only a few small changes would
revolutionize their life and solve nearly all of their top issues.

The next biggest problem is that all of them want to talk about these bad
life-choices with me, but don't want to hear the correct choice.

------
epmatsw
I'm not sure if the lack upward mobility in the South is a result of our
economic landscape. It plausible that it's due to the lingering effects of
segregation and the fact that the vast majority of our bottom 20% are African
Americans while the majority of the top 20% are Caucasian. This map and a map
of the distribution of the African American population in the South correspond
so well it's a little disheartening.

[http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/moneybox/2013/0...](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/22/metro_area_mobility_where_you_re_born_drives_how_far_you_go/mobility%20map.png.CROP.article568-large.png)

[http://prisca.me/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/Percent_Black-20...](http://prisca.me/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/Percent_Black-2000-plankton-box.png)

[http://prisca.me/political-plankton-the-left-
behind/](http://prisca.me/political-plankton-the-left-behind/)

~~~
Zigurd
59 comments and this is the only one with the word "black."

Race still matters, very much.

------
patrickaljord
On planet Earth, Where You're Born Has a Huge Impact on How Far You'll Go In
Life.

------
ianstallings
I'm pretty sure this rings true for the whole world and not just America. I
moved from a coal mining town when I was young to washington DC and it
increased our family wealth significantly and impacted my life in a very good
way. If I had stayed in that coal mining town I would probably have done okay
but the opportunities would have been much less.

Now I'm in NYC specifically for the opportunities. I'm here to make a great
living and then one day skip town with my chest full of gold.

------
fingerprinter
I can't help but feel that this is about a couple of things:

1\. education

2\. income

3\. influence

I've travelled and lived all over the world. It always struck me odd that the
poorer places in the world always seem to value religion over education (my
perception), and it creates a nasty cycle where the majority of people
don't/can't better themselves.

I saw this first hand in the southern US where it was always God #1,
everything else (including education, which in my view is super important) #2.
You would be amazed at the things people would give up if they thought "God"
told them to.

I haven't studied the interaction of the three things above, so this is just
my observations, but if you have a strong influencer at a young age, that
influencer has a dramatic effect on the trajectory of your life. If that
person pushes you to education, likely you'll be ok. Though it goes both ways.
If the influencer pushes you away from education (for whatever reason), your
life situation could end up very differently.

I was very lucky to have a non-religious teacher mother who pushed education
above all else. I didn't know college "was optional". In my family, it wasn't.
Not b/c I think college is necessary; I don't by any means. It was her
thinking and pushing that molded me in a certain direction. Even though I grew
up in the northeast US, I saw super religious families who pushed their kids
away from education. Those kids are now in the their 30s and 40s and have lost
most of their lives to "god".

~~~
joshuacc
As a bit of a counterpoint, I'm originally from rural Mississippi and was
raised by very religious parents who would absolutely say that God should be
#1. But this didn't translate into devaluing education. Instead they viewed it
as their religious duty to give their children the very best education they
could so that we could make a positive difference in the world.

"You would be amazed at the things people would give up if they thought "God"
told them to."

I wouldn't be surprised at all. My parents made tremendous sacrifices to
provide their children with a better life because they believed God wanted
them to.

On the flip side, I have often seen people making poor decisions and
attributing the decision to what they believed God wanted them to do. However,
I don't think it is at all obvious that this is caused by their belief in God.
It seems more likely to me that in the absence of belief in God, they would
make similarly poor decisions but give different justifications.

------
bluedino
I don't understand why people in terrible positions stay where they are. I
realize it takes at least some money to move, you need a way to get where
you're going and you need money when you get there to eat and have a place to
stay, but previous generations were much more mobile than we are now.

My grandparents constantly re-located to where the work was. They did
construction so they'd move to where a big hurricane hit, since they'd be busy
for a few years. People from the south flocked to the mid-west for factory
jobs in the middle of the last century.

But this generation, and the previous generation, are content with just
sitting on their asses. People are content to stay put after losing a job. Why
move, they're getting an unemployment check? And it's not even people who own
a home and don't wish to move.

It irks me when people say, "I can't find a job here." Change where here is!
Beg, borrow, or steal a couple hundred bucks and hop a Greyhound out to the
oil fields. Do _something_.

~~~
mercer
Could you show some evidence that previous generations were more mobile? I'm
not disputing it, but I'm inclined to think we're not much more or less mobile
than previous generations...

------
fistofjohnwayne
A note to anyone reading this who's living in the red zones, feeling
discouraged.

It's going to be hard. You'll have to seize every opportunity and work as hard
as you can with each one because you don't have the money to buy second
chances. You'll have to work twice as hard to get a quarter of the distance.
You'll have to say goodbye to those that stayed behind because almost everyone
will stay. You're going to have survivor's guilt. Your religion will evolve so
please don't sacrifice any opportunities over the beliefs you hold today.

If you stay strong, work hard and have a lot of luck you can make it out.

------
pnathan
One thing that I think bears study and consideration is the attitudes towards
moving. One of my chief remembrances from my collegiate/high school years is
that some students would simply not want to move somewhere else to get a job:
they wanted to be near family, even if that destroyed their chances at a
decent job.

I hypothesize that willingness to leave location correlates strongly with
income mobility.

------
Arjuna
I was born and grew up in WV. As many of you know, it is a poor state. We grew
up on powdered milk. Most of my ancestors either went into chemical production
(a local term from where I grew up is the "Chemical Valley", although most of
that production and associated jobs are gone now) or slipped into the mines to
work _black gold_ [1].

We didn't have a lot, and there was no way that we could afford a computer.
However, from a young age, I knew that I wanted to get into something called
_computer programming_ , as it was called in some books that I had checked out
from the library. I was amazed that there was this "machine" that you could
give instructions, which would cause it to display graphics and text on a TV,
or play sounds from the TV's speaker. So, for as long as I can remember, I
have always had an interest in computers.

It seems like only yesterday that I was out cutting lawns in the summer or
shoveling snow in the winter so that I could earn enough lumber to buy a
Commodore 64 [2], which was a king's ransom for a young lad in the early 80s.

"You want to buy a... computer?", is what I remember my parents saying, in the
most puzzling tone, when I indicated my intentions to them.

It was a reasonable response at the time, since most people where I lived
didn't know what a computer was. Fortunately, I must have done a good job of
explaining just exactly why someone would want to use a computer (much less
own one), because my request was granted.

Like all of our travels, this was a family event; all of us loaded up in the
car (a timeless 1974 AMC Gremlin [3] — those that remember the car will recall
that the maximum setting on the air conditioning dial read, "Desert use only")
and drove down to the bank, where I withdrew enough money to purchase the
single-most expensive item that I would ever purchase as an adolescent.

I didn't have enough for the Datasette [4] (much less the 1541 [5]), so I
would write programs and leave the computer on. I would stay up late, teaching
myself to program by reading the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide
[6].

Of course, my computer use quickly started showing up in the monthly power
bill, and my dad started checking in with me every night, to make sure that I
had turned the computer off. That was of course very difficult, because I had
to manually write the programs down so that I could type them in again later.
I eventually saved up enough for the Datasette, and finally even a 1541.

The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've
personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from
or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it
happen; it's all up to you. On that topic, one of my favorite quotes is by
Vince Lombardi [7]:

"A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have
the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if
you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for
the things that are worthwhile, it can be done."

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette)

[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541)

[6]
[http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c6...](http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c64-programmers_reference.htm)

[7]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Lombardi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Lombardi)

Edit:

Thank you all for your replies.

I am very lucky to have identified, early on, what I like and to have the good
fortunate that it became something more in my life.

I agree that there is a mix of luck, desire, work and opportunity-seizing that
must come into play, in order to assist in an individual's attempt at making a
dream turn into reality.

I stand corrected... "obstacle1" and "jshen" are correct... I've made the
mistake of extrapolating a single experience to all cases across the board.

And, as "mkr-hn" pointed out, we don't live in a vacuum... so many factors and
people come into play in our lives.

~~~
jshen
"I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come
from or your background"

No, it really isn't. Statistics show this very clearly, and this shouldn't
require statistics for us to know it.

"Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good
people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet
I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t
born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not
hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of
insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic
wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious."
[http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-
witho...](http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-without-even-
trying/)

~~~
mindcrime
Yay, another HN post that seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have
any control over the outcomes in their lives, and tries to attribute
everything to luck and uncontrollable external factors.

The reality is, we all live in a cold, uncaring, unsympathetic world, and are
subject to multiple random and unpredictable (and uncontrollable) forces.
Pointing this out is no great insight, and this notion does little or nothing
to change how one should approach the world. In the end you can only play the
cards you are dealt, _whatever they may be_. But what you _do_ with those
cards is what matters.

People are born into disadvantageous situations all the time, and yet they
manage to escape that environment and go on to have great success. Is is
really all just "luck" or is it the case that your choices and actions affect
your ability to even take advantage of what "good luck" happens to come your
way?

"Luck = preparation + opportunity" might sound like just a silly slogan for
Nike t-shirts or something, but there's a lot of merit to that. Maybe using
pedantic definitions you can't literally "make your own luck" but in an
effective sense, that's exactly what you do. You make your own luck by putting
yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own
luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along.
You make your own luck by _acting_ to change your circumstances.

And, yes, "black swan" events (of the "bad luck" variety) can come along and
destroy you. It can happen to all of us, but that's just another tautology
that isn't a very insightful observation.

~~~
jshen
"seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the
outcomes in their lives"

Nice strawman. I certainly don't believe that.

"You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things
happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage
of opportunities that come along."

This is true, but it is only half the story. Different environments have
different amounts of opportunity. America has far more opportunity than
Afghanistan, making your own luck will get you a lot farther in America and
you can't "make" which country you were born into. Environment plays a huge
role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone
that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers
have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.

~~~
mindcrime
_Nice strawman. I certainly don 't believe that._

That's good to know. And I'm not saying that you specifically _do_ believe
that... it's more that your earlier post just seems to fit into a meme that
seems to be becoming more and more prevalent around here, in which everything
becomes attributable to "luck". Perhaps I over-reached in lumping your post
into that category. Probably I'm just overly sensitive on this topic. :-)

 _Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge
role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and
a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It 's important to
recognize that._

I mean, yeah, in a sense... but you can work backwards from _any_ success and
find ways to attribute that success to luck. I mean, we're all "lucky" that a
huge asteroid didn't strike the Earth yesterday and cause a worldwide
cataclysm that might have killed us all. But focusing on that isn't, IMO,
terribly useful, exactly because those things are out of our control.

OTOH, unless one rejects the idea of "free will" (which is certainly a valid
point of debate), then you _can_ control your own choices and actions - and I
tend to believe that it's more important to focus on those things which are
subject to (at least a degree of) control by us as individuals.

~~~
jshen
" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful"

I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we
should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies
that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social
mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.

~~~
mindcrime
_We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are
failing._

True. Unfortunately there's quite a bit of debate about what policies are best
at increasing opportunity.

~~~
jshen
I think real analysis, with real data, goes a long way. It's ideology that
messes it up.

------
jessriedel
As I predicted when I opened this thread, the top 5 comments are anecdotal
personal stories.

------
mmuro
Terrible title. It's not where you are born; it's where you grow up.

~~~
akjj
Where you're born has a large and statistically significant impact on where
you grow up.

------
lifeformed
What's the deal with North Dakota? It's not the first place I think of when I
hear "Land of Opportunity".

~~~
bane
I believe it's the oil industry.

------
MikeCapone
> In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

I think you can replace "In America" by "On Earth" and that'll still be
accurate. Just being born in America is a pretty big win compared to being
born, say, in Rwanda.

------
knerd1
Misleading headline. The study is more accurately paraphrased as 'where you
grow up.' The authors found little difference between those who moved when
they were young from a low mobility area to a high mobility area.

I would love to see a deeper investigation into how mixed-income neighborhoods
positively impact mobility. It's a relevant point when discussing housing
subsidies and future infrastructure projects. Many of the low mobility
families in the NYT article have no car or only one car. In modern cities
which depend almost exclusively on private-car transportation, this is a
serious obstacle to higher wages.

------
buf
I never believe in the odds. I was born in a farm town in Oklahoma where I
spent 25 years. Then I moved to California, built a billion dollar company,
earned a small fortune, and now I'm running a company in London.

------
noonespecial
The good part about America is that it's correlation, not causation. The bad
part is we seem to be sliding down that hill.

------
gyardley
This bottom-quintile to top-quintile measurement is annoying. A 'low mobility'
area could be largely due to less upwardly-mobile poor _or_ less downwardly-
mobile affluent, and thanks to the researchers' weak choice of metric it's
impossible to tell which.

------
kenster07
You can replace "In America" with "In Any Country."

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_ceiling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_ceiling)

------
jdminhbg
In Slate Headlines, Correlation Is Causation.

~~~
rayiner
Ah yes, the causation must run the other way: where you go in life has a huge
impact on where you were born.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Let's recall four standard reasons for a correlation of two variables:

(1) Coincidence. One rose over some time period, and the other also rose over
the same period, despite being completely unrelated. (The world murder rate
has been going down, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been going up.
This is a negative correlation.)

(2) A causes B. (Cigarette smokers display lung cancer at elevated rates)

(3) B causes A. (Cigarette smokers display lung cancer at elevated rates)

(4) Root cause. Some other phenomenon causes both A and B. (Children in homes
containing books display intelligence at elevated rates)

This should be obvious, but arguing against option (2) doesn't mean arguing
for option (3).

~~~
rayiner
What's a concrete example of (4) in this context that doesn't reduce trivially
to (3)?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Well, I can't actually produce a number for this, but how would you feel about
a correlation between first digit of US zip code and incidence of Tay-Sachs
disease?

Note: Tay-Sachs is something that happens to Jews, and Jews are concentrated
in New York.

Does the zip code connection satisfy your demand of "in this context"?

~~~
rayiner
My point is that "where you were born" is a broader term than "the zip code
where you were born." Obviously your zip code doesn't cause anything. But your
zip code determines things like what the schools are like in the area, what
the income demographics are like in the area, etc. When people say "where you
were born determines where you end up" they're referring to that larger
definition of "where you were born" not literally your zip code. That's what
makes many versions of (4) collapse into (3).

Though I think your Tay-Sachs example is one that arguably does not.

------
thehme
Can't even load page to play/est map. ugh.

------
gonzo
There are only 48 states shown on the map. Why?

