
Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong - paulpauper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-kids-who-do-everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything-wrong/
======
Gustomaximus
An event that will always stay with me, some years ago I a job opened up where
I would have some sway in recommending candidates. I had a uni friend who
would fit the role well. A great bloke, smart and hard working. He came from a
very blue collar, low income background. His job was pretty middle of the road
stuff.

This job would have been lateral in responsibility but in a better industry
giving about 2+ times salary. I mentioned this role and said I would get him a
chat with the hiring manager. They seemed interested. I said you can double
your salary. At this point they got cold feet and said 'it sounds too
important for me'. I told them I knew the job, that it would suit them and I
wouldn't burn my own credibility if I want confident they would succeed. But
they money spooked them.

And while this was a sample of one it really opened my eyes to sense of
entitlement that comes with growing up in a wealthy vs poor enviroment. And
simply the expectations you approach life with, having a overriding effect on
natural ability.

There are so many variable in play for this its not a one issue answer but I
suspect this one is more important than we typically give it credit for. An
expectation on oneself of where we should end up based on how we grow up.

~~~
rhgraysonii
This really hits home for me.

I once had a conversation with a very, very experienced developer who ran a
local meetup and was discussing salary options at a new job. He balked when I
told them what I asked for, and replied:

"Just because you grew up as poor as me doesn't mean you should fear wealth.
If it makes you feel that guilty take the shit and donate it to charity."

And its really true.

My first engineering job I made almost 3x what my mother ever made in a year
over her entire life's highest salary.

I was a college dropout that was enthusiastic and knew enough to be
functional.

It really is a strange, new thing to come from nothing and all of a sudden be
able to go out to eat at an Applebee's without worrying about your finances
for a month.

Edit: The first thing I did after collecting my first 'engineering paycheck'
was go out to Applebees and get an appetizer, a drink, AND an entree, and then
proceed to not worry about it.

~~~
Throwaway892375
This is a throw away account. I'm writing this because I'm the embodiment of
poor and the embodiment of lack of social mobility.

As a child of divorce, I lived in affluent suburbia. However, everything was
devoted to keeping the house and to food. There was next to nothing for
anything else. I had three jobs going through high school. When I was in
school I was told that I couldn't qualify for financial aid because of how
much money my father made. His life was dedicated to revenge on my mother and
he spent HUGE swaths of money to avoid paying $200/month in child support.
Getting money from him for tuition or getting him to sign on the student loan
forms was an impossibility. Ironically, I had none of the advantages of being
poor.

Graduating average was going to be 96%. They kicked me out at the last minute
almost. Truancy. I had the flu for a couple of days. Doctor's note required.
The father trying to make my mother's life a living hell by yelling everyday
at school administrators did not help either. Nothing in my life was stranger
than having a school administrator that I had never previously interacted with
tell me that they want to kick me out of the school simply to make life easier
for themselves.

Finding employment in 'my field' had not been easy. Usually I worked at mind
numbing non-WDS Windows 7 deployments for a one or two month stint. I have not
been able to ever get work 'in my field' that paid over $20,000 USD per year.
I've had employment where I was programming at minimum wage and the clients
were billed $3000 USD per day for my work. Respectfully negotiating was of
course fruitless in this situation. I've been in this sort of situation
several times. The worst people seem to find me and take advantage. Usually,
pay to billing factors are between 5-10.

I started to not want to interact with employers in person. I started making
my living making making Android Apps for clients on RFQ sites until 2014. I
was getting paid from $50 to $400 per app or app framework. One client took
one project and now has over 100 million users across a dozen similar apps. I
was hoping I could start to charge more but that never seemed to happen. The
best thing that happened was that I had people halfway around the world
constantly hounding me to work at what was essentially still minimum wage.

I am lucky because I took an early interest in Bitcoin. I'm willingly hiding
in the lowest caste of society. I'm trying to work on myself. I'd like to be
treated like a human being one day by an employer, when I am ready.

I'm not writing this to ask for help. I'm writing this to say that the stigma
of being at the bottom is very very real. And while it, at least for me, has
predominatly been an internal battle of asserting self-worth, there are
definitely people who saw the precarious situation that I was in and use it
for their advantage. Or to revel in being cruel.

~~~
morgante
I mean this respectfully, but have you tried to do some introspection?

If you actually have the skills you claim, there is huge money to be made in
hiring you as a programmer making $40k/year. Your background _really_ should
not be such a determining factor: I have clients who have literally never met
me and have only the vaguest idea of who I am. It's all about making
compelling work and demanding compensation for it.

If you think this is impossible, I would happily be that guy and pay you
$40/hr (which is under market but a hell of a lot more than $20k a year) to
work on client projects.

~~~
Lord_Zero
Im not sure where you guys are from, but the average Android developer salary
is like $90K a year [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/android-developer-
salary-...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/android-developer-salary-
SRCH_KO0,17.htm)

------
bshlgrs
This article is terrible. It makes a shitty and misleading graph, and
generates a variety of nonsensical judgements from it.

The graph used makes it really hard to see what the actual distributions of
overall income are. If you make, say, a bar graph of the income distributions,
you'll see that poor college grads do much better than rich high school
dropouts. I made such a graph here:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/112K9ejdFQMPcnvEqERT2...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/112K9ejdFQMPcnvEqERT2k2Oe7Tk7zJ-
YHFuA3LikFRA/edit?usp=sharing)

I also estimated the average incomes of both groups based on the given
statistics, and found an average income of $78k for the poor college grads and
$60k for the rich high school dropouts.

The main piece of evidence that this blog post uses to support its thesis is:
"Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as
poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent,
respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely
to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne'er-do-wells. Some meritocracy."

The first of these statistics is not clearly related to meritocracy. If you
want high income mobility, you want both these numbers to be low. The sentence
is phrased as if it's bad that the numbers are similar; that doesn't make
sense.

The second of these statistics is correctly interpreted, but seems cherry-
picked: I could just as easily point out that 41% of poor college grads end up
in the top 40% of income, while only 19% of rich high school dropouts do. To
prevent such cherry-picking, we should probably use the Schelling point
summary statistics like mean income or median income, both of which indicate
that the poor college grads are doing _significantly_ better.

As far as I can tell, the original paper didn't do anything wrong, this
"reporter" just decided to make up some bullshit conclusions from the
statistics. This is even worse than most reporting--the mistake isn't
something you have to read the original source to find, the mistake is right
there in the graph that Facebook is suggesting as the image preview. Alas!

~~~
lsen001
Agreed - this article is quite disingenuous.

From the graphs provided, comparing them makes no sense. Each should be taken
own its own; i.e. At the start of college, 100% of the poor kids where in the
lowest income percentile. At age 40, only 16% remain. Whereas, for the high
school dropouts, only 14% remained in their income percentile (the highest) at
age 40.

I think that describes a meritocracy very well. The opportunity is there - you
have to work at it.

------
mac01021
This doesn't seem particularly remarkable to me.

> Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as
> poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent,
> respectively.

They're saying social mobility (up or down) is attainable for 85% of each
group. And graduating college is not really the same as making all the right
choices...

~~~
falcolas
The linked PDF's conclusions and figures gives a bit more context; the numbers
are not 85%. From the PDF, rich means the top 20th percentile of income,
whereas poor is the bottom 20th percentile.

For the dropouts, you only have a 46% chance of mobility if you're poor. For
the college graduates, only 63% of the rich will be downward bound.

Another interesting bit: a poor dropout is more likely to remain poor as a
rich dropout has to remain in the top three quintiles of income. They also
have only a one percent chance of bucking the trends and becoming rich.

A rich college graduate has almost 2x the chance of remaining rich as a poor
graduate has of getting rich.

Also, the country heatmap of percentages of people who achieve mobility is
very telling as well.

In all, college appears to be a good equalizer for mobility; but given that
most people want to be upwardly mobile, you probably don't want to be poor to
begin with. Also, don't be born out of wedlock or black. If you really want
the best chance of living the "American Dream", your best chance is to be born
to white, rich, continuously married parents, and go to college.

[https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-
sawhi...](https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf)

~~~
x1798DE
> A rich college graduate has almost 2x the chance of remaining rich as a poor
> graduate has of getting rich.

This is all super fuzzy and almost impossible to interpret. It sounds to me
like people are becoming rich at some rate, and staying rich at a higher rate.
Seems like it would lead to everyone being rich, in the end (though these are
quintile numbers, so it's a relative ranking, so I assume some other outcomes
are available that make things balance).

------
nostromo
This is presented as if this opinion journalist found a causative relationship
when he's done no such thing. He's just looking at correlations and then
shoehorning in his favorite explanations (glass floors, glass ceilings,
diploma mills).

Take a look at his previous articles and maybe you'll identify a trend:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/matt-
obrien/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/matt-obrien/)

~~~
malandrew
This is a much better analysis on social mobility:

[https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/my-r...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/my-
response-to-the-nytimes-article-on-school-districts-test-scores-and-income/)

~~~
ap22213
I skimmed it, but I didn't see much of a point except that he seems to be
implying that poor people are more likely to be less intelligent (or rich
people are more likely to be more intelligent).

So, let's say his analysis is correct. What then? Does it mean that we should,
as a society, test for intelligence early in life and subsidize incomes
appropriately? Or, just let the poor suffer if they don't have the correct
genes?

~~~
kagamine
It's probably not genetic. Ask any school teacher who does well in class and
who struggles, who has ADHD and who concentrates for hours at a time and they
will tell you diet and routine (also linked to wealth) are almost always
obvious signals for success.

It's not scientific, but the kids that struggle eat frozen pizza and stay up
late. It could be the teachers I know finding evidence where there is none,
but year after in that job by all those teachers suggests otherwise.

~~~
rcafdm
I created the blog post. That post was largely focused on _academic_ outcomes,
especially variation in various test scores and related measures of general
cognitive ability (aka "intelligence"), but:

1) there is also good direct evidence that genes explain a large fraction of
the systematic variation in economic outcomes. I invite you to read this
[https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER...](https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER_DP364.pdf)
(especially pg25, table 1, and compare h^2 vs c^2 )

2) Parental involvement is unlikely to explain much of the black-white
disparity.
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09645292.2016.123...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09645292.2016.1235137)

3) teacher observations and other casually observed bivariate correlations are
heavily confounded by genes. the kids with seriously disordered lives are
significantly _more likely_ to have parents with low executive function and
cognitive abilities and are more likely themselves to have low executive
functioning.
[http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/137/2/201/](http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/137/2/201/)

4) I am not arguing that parents/communities are entirely unimportant in all
dimensions, but the role is much, much smaller than is commonly believed and
it particularly has relatively little influence on cognition and closely
related phenotypes. The influence of parents is more on things like
educational attainment which, while significantly determined by innate
ability, are probably not purely genetic (holding other things equal children
of more educated parents get more education..... much more about
culture/preferences than ability to afford though

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w22734](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22734)

~~~
ap22213
So, assuming that you've thought a bunch about this topic, what kind of
policies would you recommend to address it? That is, given the genetic
influence and subsequent lower quality of life, should it be considered and
treated as a disease?

~~~
rcafdm
I'd recommend focusing on policy that is actually informed by a realistic
assessment of the evidence regardless of your personal views/preferences.

In my view, we spend a tremendous amount of money on schools (over-funding ->
fancy facilities, labs, etc), pre-K, enrichment programs and the like that
have approximately no effect on predictors of future success, some direct
evidence suggests does nothing for income/employment, etc. I'm not fully on
board with the progressive agenda (basically center right), but I'm not
totally heartless either. I'd rather see that money spent on direct transfers
to families. I don't believe the issues faced by lower income are purely
economic though. Redistributing money will generally accomplish _less_ (not
nothing) than people think in terms of the things that are associated with
poverty/low income (health, behaviors, etc). The issues are in part moral and
spiritual; lack of purpose through lack of steady work, family connection, etc
is an issue in some parts of the country and more money won't do much to solve
them (may actually make them worse in some dimensions, especially if it
encourages less work->drugs etc). We may find that we accomplish more good by
keeping people engaged with some kind of work and community activity (which is
why I'm opposed to minimum wage and would rather see EITC expanded).....

I also think we need to think carefully and _honestly_ about immigration
policy. Bringing in genuinely low-skill labor by the millions is not a formula
for long term economic or social success. Though many of these immigrants are
decent hard working people that stay employed and see large increases versus
what they would have had in their home countries, their children and
grandchildren tend to look and act more like equivalently skilled multi-
generational citizens (similar problems in multiple dimensions).

Maybe in 10-20 years genetic engineering people for intelligence and related
characteristics will be feasible, probably a few more for it to become cheap
and acceptable in the developed world, but I'm not quite prepared to bet the
farm on that today. If it does, however the implications for the world will be
staggering though (especially in the developing world..... so many problems
are ultimately a result of issues here)

~~~
ap22213
Do we really need genetic modification to address this though? Humans have had
an effective history of inventing tools to scale their performance by
magnitudes. For example, a Human was quite ineffective at digging the land so
they invented the shovel and plow. There are a million examples, of course.

Why would attributes of the mind somehow be impossible to similarly enhance?

Anyway, it seems like you're main concerns are ineffective and costly methods
that don't address the root problem. So, why not propose a new method or
invent a tool? Bringing light to the issue helps a little, but at a certain
point it is better to do what we're good at - inventing things to make us more
effective.

I don't know about you, but personally, I'm exhausted from always being the
smartest person in the room. I would love it if someone invented a mental
shovel, because there's too much work to do and not enough people to do it.

~~~
rcafdm
Sure, it'd be great of someone invented some kind of mental effort multiplier.
We might even call these devices "computers" ;-) In all honesty though, (1) I
don't know where to begin here (2) I'm not sure something akin to a "mental
shovel" would significantly address the distributional issues. Some people are
still going to be significantly more able than others.....

------
paulpauper
[https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/10/...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2014/10/Poor-
Grads-Rich-Dropouts.jpg)

Hmmm but it doesn't look so bad when you consider that 67% of poor college
grads are at least 50-percentile in wealth, vs 49% of rich high school
dropouts.

I'm sure is even better when you compare poor high school dropouts vs. poor
college graduates, which is why a college degree may still be worth the money
and the best pathway out of poverty, especially if you major in a high ROI
field like STEM.

~~~
randomdata
_> Hmmm but it doesn't look so bad when you consider that 67% of poor college
grads are at least 50-percentile in wealth_

Where does it show that? The chart you linked to shows income quintiles, not
wealth. I couldn't find it in the article either, but may have overlooked it.

A wealth visualization would be quite appropriate here though, as a high
income does not necessarily lead to retaining wealth. Some suggest that those
who grow up poor struggle to manage their money, so it would be interesting to
see if those who came from poor families with higher earnings became rich
themselves, or if they remained poor.

 _> I'm sure is even better when you compare poor high school dropouts vs.
poor college graduates, which is why a college degree may still be worth the
money and the best pathway out of poverty_

I'm not sure what you are really going to glean from that comparison? People
generally don't drop out of high school without a reason. Usually, those
reasons are what also lead them to do poorly in the workplace. If you try to
compare education and income like that, you end up with a bias towards those
whose situation did not provide the problems that resulted in them dropping
out of school and doing poorly in the workplace.

What may be revealed here is that rich kids have more opportunity. They have
all the reasons to drop out that the poor have, but additional reasons such as
having a golden opportunity at the family business or within the family's
social network. The latter does not negatively impact their future because
they dropped out for positive reasons, not because they had a deeper problem
that was holding them back in their schooling and continued to hold them back
in the workplace.

~~~
nostrebored
I think this is overlooking another potential factor: Rich culture is better
than poor culture.

A college dropout who has grown up rich is going to be more likely to value
knowledge than a poor person, will have been exposed to more money management,
and being rich is positively correlated with making good life decisions.

Contrast that with poor culture, where we know that the inverse is true in
many cases: Knowledge is not valued to the same degree -- or at least not the
same type of knowledge. Money management might have been understanding how to
live paycheck to paycheck (which is a valuable skill, but not the same as
understanding how to save). And being poor is positively correlated with
making bad decisions.

The more that I unlearn my "poor person habits", the better my life becomes.
While I always enjoyed learning, so much of my time was spent on useless,
consumerists things. I binged on television and video games. As recent studies
have shown, rich people were more likely to have been doing something
productive (networking/reading etc.) with that time.

~~~
hkt
Being poor is actually associated with making modally appropriate decisions.
That is to say that people adjust to it.

Case in point is discounting: offer someone £20 today or £100 in a year. A
person poor enough will likely take the money now, and this is because _it has
more value to them now_.

People aren't awful, they're adjusted to circumstances that are awful, being
the products of a sick system. Properly provisioned welfare - a genuine safety
net instead of a humiliation - could prevent the circumstances that lead to
this kind of adjustment.

Economics has much to say about how people value things differently based on
their circumstances. There is no "better" or "worse".

~~~
nostrebored
'There is no "better" or "worse".'

This assumes that everyone is a rational actor. Unfortunately, assuming that
everyone is effective at allocating resources or time is unsafe and wildly
inaccurate. My mother's hours spent cutting coupons rather than finding a job
(over years) misvalued the long term impact of having a job and developing a
career. My father's allocation of money that we did not have to cigarettes
rather than a savings account had extremely negative long term effects.

I grew up around poor people, and I saw their mistakes. I made their mistakes,
and I still do. Which isn't to say that all poor people are incapable of
making effective financial decisions, just that the distribution is skewed;
there are "better" and "worse" valuations of things, and fundamentally people
who are worse at making these valuations will on average be poorer.

------
lordCarbonFiber
I feel like the provided chart doesn't quite match up well with the presented
narrative. Granted it's hard to evaluate since they neglect to define what the
bar for rich and poor is, however, assuming by rich and poor they mean born in
the 1st and 5th quartiles by income, the chart would imply over 80% of 1st
quartile dropouts fall at least one income quartile and corresponding
graduating college (note there's no stratification as to what kind of college,
ie whether predatory for profit schools are included, breakdowns by tier of
university, etc) results in income mobility (measured by an increase of one or
more income quintiles) for over 80% of 5th quartile students.

Granted, I think a better state would be closer to 100% of college graduates
are able to live comfortable lives, but I think the data doesn't point to the
doom and gloom of insurmountable educational advantage the author seems to
want to present.

~~~
randomdata
_> the chart would imply over 80% of 1st quartile dropouts fall at least one
income quartile_

While I agree that stronger definitions are necessary, that implies that _all_
high school dropouts from rich families were personally making 1st quintile
incomes at some point before the age of 40. That seems _highly_ unlikely to
me. Even children of rich families are usually expected to work and find a way
to make their own income (even if that comes through family connections), not
have their parents income flow to them unimpeded and reclaimed as their own
income. There is no reason to believe that these children of rich families
were ever making as much as their parents at any point in time, save the 14%
that did accomplish it.

As such, for all intents and purposes, the chart shows what two groups who
both effectively started with zero income were able to achieve by the age of
40. The interesting thing is that there isn't much variance. Yes, the poor
college graduates fared slightly better – but only slightly. That is in stark
contrast to the popular narrative that high school dropouts are doomed to
failure, forever stuck working for minimum wage, _if they are lucky_ and that
getting a degree will magically save you from being poor.

------
soreal
See, this is the thing about population studies.

1\. Millions of people live their life 2\. Academics put people into buckets
in order to count them 3\. Other academics group that data and label those
people 4\. Even more other academics come along and do more groupings then
write a paper. 5\. A newspaper writes an article with a catchy headline and an
out-of-context image with arrows drawn on it to call your attention to one
correlation but not others, then proceeds to use that data to make arguments
that don't actually follow

At every step along the way, a biased researcher or newspaper makes
assumptions, discards outliers, and labels individuals in such a way that if
we focus on their chosen pivot, we see what they want us to see.

Longitudinal studies, machine learning, and more are all improvements on the
current shaky process. I just hope they continue to catch on despite being
tougher to do.

~~~
peterkshultz
I agree with your take on newspapers: they try and capture the attention of a
layman audience. As such, their work can be simplified to the point of
impropriety from time to time.

I'm less inclined to agree with your opinion on academic research, however.
Systems of peer review--and softer systems, like those of repute amongst
colleagues--are in place for the express purpose of eliminating biases and
errors across research works.

In the social sciences, there is a great amount of care that goes into
ensuring that: 1\. Data is handled properly 2\. Future inquiries are sound

Whether or not that care happened in this body of work is up for debate.

------
zhemao
There's a lot of conclusions being drawn here and not much data analysis.

Just going off the chart, it seems that poor college grads are more likely to
be in the top half of the income distribution, while rich college dropouts are
more likely to be in the bottom half. Isn't that good news as far as social
mobility goes?

------
LouisSayers
It's not what you know, it's who you know.

If you're a poor kid that manages to mingle with the rich and famous, I'd
imagine you'd have some pretty good opportunities come your way too regardless
of education.

That's the real factor here. If you're connected, you can sell your shitty web
hosting to all your dad's friends, and you can have doors open for you with
minimal effort.

Regardless, there are rags to riches stories - sure, if you're poor you will
probably have to play life in hard mode, but it's pretty cool to say "I
started on $4.75ph, and now I make $100ph". There will still be struggles
however - it's hard to buy a house when none of your family can act as
guarantor, and you may have to help family members out every now and then.

In the end, we all die, and life is what you make of it. It's also nice to
remind ourselves every now and then of how much better off we are than 90% of
the world still.

~~~
Mz
_If you 're a poor kid that manages to mingle with the rich and famous, I'd
imagine you'd have some pretty good opportunities come your way too regardless
of education._

In theory. It is a theory I would like to believe in. But as a homeless woman
who has managed to become the top ranked woman on HN, a forum that has plenty
of people with quite a lot more money than me, as well as expertise in making
money online (the thing I desire to do to resolve my personal problems, rooted
in an incurable medical condition), so far, it seems to have not done all that
much for me.

Being homeless has been incredibly eye-opening as to just how invisible you
can be to people who think you aren't good enough for some reason. So saying
"well, you just need to _meet_ the right people..." sounds like yet another
excuse to me for The Haves to wash their hands of improving the world and
justify the suffering of The Have Nots as somehow all their fault.

FYI: I was not only one of the top students of my graduating class, I was one
of the top students in my state and in the country. I was state alternate for
the Governor's Honors program at age 15 and I won a National Merit Scholarship
at age 17. So my lack of ability to make connections that benefit me isn't
because I am inarticulate or incompetent.

~~~
LouisSayers
Being popular on HackerNews is not what I'd consider mingling with 'the
haves'. Mingling to me is being invited to dinner parties, socialising in the
real world, being called a friend.

Of course if you start from homelessness, then you have a hard journey ahead
of you. I'm not saying it's easy - it's a long and arduous affair no doubt.

I resent your tone somewhat, I can assure you that I did not start from the
top at all - that my views are extremely well balanced.

It sounds as though you are quite competent intellectually, but as we can see
from the research, competence does not equal effectiveness at least not in the
financial sense. This is why I say - it is who you know. And not just 'who
knows you', but who likes you, who has a feeling of obligation towards you or
someone close to you.

I don't say this to beat down on people that haven't 'succeeded' in life, I
say this as a pragmatist - as someone that recognises inequality, recognises
that the world is not fair (and may never be), and offers a view of how to
cheat the system somewhat. It's a hack, but it seems to work so why not give
it a go?

~~~
Mz
You resent my tone. I resent your implicit dismissal that I have a point at
all. That is something routinely done to people who are "the wrong kind of
people," whether it is their gender, sexual orientation, social class or some
other Othering category.

Calling it a hack that you are suggesting is an extremely different idea from
your initial framing. I am someone who focuses a lot on what the disadvantaged
individual can do for themselves in the here and now, in spite of the system
being broken. I have learned to be more careful about how I speak of such
things because if you aren't careful, it absolutely reads as blaming the
victim and dismissing the idea that the system itself needs to change.

Your initial framing of "It's not what you know, it's who you know" is an
incredibly problematic framing. It implies that you don't really need to study
or make an effort or have ambition. That works for the rich kids, as this
article suggests. If you are poor and trying to find a hack to get ahead, you
better be smart, knowledgeable, hard working and ambitious and have a plan.
Then finding the right person to connect with might open doors for you. But
when a poor person hears _It 's not what you know, it's who you know,_ there
is the danger that they will interpret that to mean that they just need to
find a rich person to latch onto and take advantage of. It also is very
disrespectful of the few who do make it that way, like their sorry ass got
saved, not that they succeeded against long odds, in part due to using a
social hack.

Some of your implicit assumptions seem to be that we are talking about people
with entrepreneurial ambitions. Not everyone has that. Furthermore, my mom and
aunt used to work dinner parties at rich folks' houses. Most folks at those
parties are pretty well heeled. Most poor people at such events are serving
the food and cleaning up, not hobnobbing with the rich.

I suggest you seriously rethink your dismissal of the value of meeting people
online. Plenty of people make that work and it has the potential to bring down
social barriers and allow poor folks to make connections and further plans in
spite of not dressing right, not being able to get an invite to a cocktail
party, etc. But one of the problems is that if people online learn you are
poor, they turn a deaf ear to your efforts to further your entrepreunerial
plans and dismis you as someone trying to hit them up for money rather than
recognizing that your goal is to make money online -- just like a lot of them
are currently doing.

I will also note generally that you are not the first person to dismiss out of
hand the idea that me having a few thousand karma on HN should mean something.
I don't know if it is classism or sexism or what, but that is an example of
"the rules are differemt for some folks, and not in a good way." Because when
men here have several thousand karma points, it absolutely does get cited by
people as evidence of their intelligence and the value they have to offer.
(Recent example :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775170))
But if I say I have inordinately high amounts of karma for a woman here, that
is routinely dismissed as not meaningful in any way, shape or form.

Also, I am not "starting from homelessness." I was 46 when I ended up on the
street. I am noting that as a PSA. People who are homeless routinely get
treated like they were born homeless and never had a life. Their educational
background and other relevant life experiences get completely dismissed. This
is a significant social barrier for those who are homeless and would like to
actually solve their problems.

Best. Thanks for replying.

~~~
LouisSayers
I never intended my initial post as a dismissal of hard work. I actually
assumed that people would understand it to be an expansion of a common saying
"It's not what you know, it's who you know" \- although I didn't feel the
quotes were necessary.

I'm not saying that there's no value in meeting people online - I think that's
quite different than having a million karma points on a forum however. I also
don't know how you can equate sexism and classism to 'dismissing' points on a
forum... for starters, I didn't even register that I was talking to a female,
and to be honest, all the points say to me is that you must spend a whole lot
of time on here!

Lastly, I understand that you relate what's said on here to your current
living situation. It seems to me however that you're reading into things that
are simply not there. I have no intention of oppressing or judging anyone, and
in fact my intention is quite the opposite. I would hope that if anything,
someone might stop and think critically - think about their connections, or
their social skills, think of how to improve that area of their life alongside
their other skills. That's my real intention here.

I wish you all the best - I know that it sucks to be poor. My mum is poor, I
bought her a car last year (she used to just walk everywhere) to be able to
take my brother to school etc. When it comes to money, my Grandmother
instilled in me a great mindset (probably some Tony Robbins in here as well).
She would say that she is rich - that being poor is a mindset. My Grandmother
is actually extremely rich - she just happens to be temporarily broke a lot
lol.

~~~
Mz
I do not really want to fight with you and I think you are reading in a bunch
of stuff that is not there. But I do want to say framing matters and the
quotation marks you left out would have helped, though probably not enough.

Take care.

~~~
LouisSayers
No worries, I guess our minds want to see what our minds want to see.

I wish you all the best with your situation.

------
budadre75
These stats are interpreted wrong. Assuming poor college kids started out from
1st quintile(<20%), then at 40 yo, 41% of them are above 4th quintile(>60%),
while only 19% for poor HS dropouts. And there are more poor college kids in
5th quintile(>80%) than poor HS dropouts, 20% to 16%. This is from conclusion
of the paper: "Nonetheless, we find it encouraging that a set of well-
evaluated programs appear, according to the model, to make it possible to
close most of the gap in the lifetime incomes between children born into lower
and higher income families"

------
anotheryou
Anyone else confused by the diagonal arrow on the graph?

edit:

> Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as
> poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent,
> respectively.

weird comparison

~~~
cbhl
The arrow basically says that 14% and 16% are similar.

"As a rich high school dropout, you have a 14% chance of being in the top
20%." "As a poor college grad, you have a 16% chance of being in the bottom
20%."

If you're in that ~15% of each group, you get the premise that the "poor"
college grads didn't do better than the corresponding "rich" dropouts.

~~~
bshlgrs
But that makes no sense--if you want high social mobility (and you think
college grads should be paid more), you want _both_ those numbers to be lower.
The article treats it as a problem that they're similar.

~~~
cbhl
I agree. I actually think this whole article is just a puff piece; the premise
makes no sense.

------
partycoder
Well, that's what economical disadvantage is about.

A rich student can afford to attempt to enter a top school many consecutive
times, by not having the pressure of having to work as soon as possible. Then
once accepted, can afford to have minimum passing grades.

A poor student can only enter a top school by earning a scholarship by having
good grades, and sometimes that scholarship needs to be maintained by keeping
certain grades. A poor student might also need to work to supplement his
income since the scholarship might not cover all costs. So less time to
socialize and relax.

Then, there's also a disadvantage of food, health, housing, risk of being
exposed to bad influences, physical security.

So it's a little bit of a rigged game.

~~~
jamie_
To people who agree with this post, I have a genuine question: Is it a general
principle of yours that the parents' efforts and accomplishments should not
carry on to the child or there should be a limit to the benefit? Aren't you
ignoring that, excluding historic inequities, rich people's parents didn't
grow money on a tree? If Rob Rich's and Pete Pauper's grandparents had the
same opportunities, but Rich's used their resources more wisely, made better
decisions and fewer mistakes, shouldn't Rich benefit from that? Or is it that
you think most old money is tainted? If so, do you have a # of generations in
mind beyond which the money should become common good instead of go to heirs?

~~~
partycoder
We should invest resources empowering people that have a higher chance of
advancing our society.

Just like people believe that a guaranteed minimum income --or other forms of
arbitrary wealth distribution-- is not a good idea because it encourages
people to work less, this would be the same thing but across generations.

------
randyrand
Why should a meritocracy be individual based instead of family based?

I personally think it's okay for families to give their inheritance/assistance
to their children even if the children don't "deserve" it. etc. Working
towards bettering your children lives is a reason many of us get up in the
morning.

~~~
glazer
That is what I often wonder on the larger discussion of "privlege". What draws
the line between your parents or grandparents having worked for a better life
for you and having some sort of shameful "privelege"? I understand that there
is a difference when it comes down to historical oppressions of entire
categories of people, but I feel that many people often confuse that and "rich
parents vs. poor parents", seeking to remedy some percieved unjust inequality
where the inequality comes from earlier sacrifices leading to more positive
outcomes.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
A person can be privileged because their parents worked hard to provide them
with a good life. The person was born into a privileged situation.

------
davesque
I think it also has a lot to do with the way different "classes" of people
like to interact with each other. People can tell when you're from a different
social group by the way you act. If you're a lower-income person interviewing
for a job at a company run by more affluent people, there might be a culture
clash which could hurt your chances of being hired. I think I've experienced
this a couple of times.

~~~
mrfusion
What was your experience like?

------
nqzero
"cultural fit" is a huge contributor to this limited mobility

~~~
ccallebs
Honestly, I think this explains quite a bit. I grew up fairly poor (single
income household in Appalachia). I had to train myself out of a lot of speech
patterns / mannerisms that don't fly in other parts of America.

It's unfortunate, but the stereotype of inbred white trash is still alive and
strong when most people hear Appalachian drawls. They hear the way we talk and
immediately think we're ignorant. It's an openly-mocked culture.

~~~
zeveb
I'd go so far as to argue that it's harder to get by as a white Appalachian
than as a black urbanite. Plenty of people & programmes care about the latter;
few about the former.

~~~
argonaut
That may be true, but the white Appalachian can learn to switch
accents/mannerisms (code switch). A black urbanite (who may already have had
to learn to code switch, depending on where they grew up) can't change their
skin color.

~~~
zeveb
Yup, that is indeed a problem. 'Race' in the U.S. is, I believe, really a
cypher for class, and where in other countries someone born to a lower-class
can learn to fit in among a better class, it's impossible to change one's
race.

This also hurts immigrants from other countries: they may be well-educated but
on first sight they appear to belong to a lower class. It's very unfortunate.

There's also the reverse effect, notably lampooned in the film _Love,
Actually_ : if you've a British accent, Americans will assume you're posh.

------
wnevets
Its much easier to make money when you already have money, ever had to play
monopoly while behind?

~~~
peterkshultz
For those who aren't aware, Monopoly and its predecessors were actually
designed to demonstrate the effects of income inequality:

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-
game/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-landlords-game/)

------
facepalm
Missing the chart for poor highschool dropouts. Otherwise it is unclear if the
lesson is just that highschool doesn't matter.

------
LyndsySimon
> But, of course, it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a
> matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more
> hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a
> child's formative early years. That's why, as Stanford professor Sean
> Reardon explains, "rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much
> better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students," and
> they're staying that way.

I agree... that's why I work a traditional 9-5 instead of traveling the
country with my wife and kids in an RV and working 15 hours per week remotely.

I view wealth not only as an exercise in creating income streams for myself
when I retire, but as a means of ensuring that my descendants have the best
possible chance at success.

------
maxt
There is an old proverb my grandmother used to say: "My house is my castle, my
cheap cotton silken, my wooden chair, made of gold". My take from that saying
was that our current economics is all gold-backed economics, and that we
express the value of something only in terms of how much we value gold. The
moment you unlearn that gold is valuable, or has some innate intrinsic value
is the moment you can replace gold with your own _version_ of value. That is
to say, the currency you use is the language you are speaking in your society.
If nobody speaks your language, the task is on you to disseminate your
language and propagate it, and this can be tough. This is where the 'hard
work' ethic does apply. It's easy to talk gold; not so easy to convince us of
silver being more valuable.

Some might argue that gold merely enables us to create these abstract forms of
currencies, or in some cases, economies, in the first place, but actually they
could form in pirate utopias that have little or no scaffolding at all, or
exist cybernetically, for example, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. A bit of a
chicken and egg situation, of course, where gold bootstraps /enables the other
alternatives. But frankly I think we are left with no other choice. We either
innovate our way out of gold backed economics (using gold) or we don't prosper
and thrive.

------
malandrew

        "It's an educational arms race that's leaving many kids 
        far, far behind."
    

This isn't a bad thing. It's an educational arms race that is moving the human
race forward faster. Communities that have placed emphasis on education early
on have not only typically outperformed their peers, but also add a lot to
human knowledge.

    
    
        Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 870 individuals, of 
        whom 185 - over 21.264% - were Jewish or people of Jewish 
        descent, although Jews and people of Jewish descent 
        comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population (or 1 in 
        every 500 people).
    

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

Furthermore, I don't understand the criticism regarding "opportunity
hoarding". I don't have children yet, but I hope to have children in a few
years once I've built the amount of wealth I would like to have before
embarking on that adventure. I don't yet feel like I've built the amount of
wealth necessary to provide my children with enough of a competitive advantage
to succeed in the 21st century. If I've worked hard to create opportunities
for my children, why should I give them away to someone who is not my child?

It's not "rigging the game". Saying that it is rigging the game is a
misunderstanding of the game. The game spans multiple generations. The game
isn't reset every generation. That's not a game I want to play. My parents
were my teammates and my children will also be my teammates.

The criticism of pitfalls out there (e.g. degree mills, payday loans) that
entrap and deprive people of opportunities is totally fair, but criticizing
the decision to spend the wealth one has earned to their progeny seems like
wanting to change the rules of the game.

Wealth inequality itself isn't the problem. Not having access to basic
necessities (health, education, sustenance, shelter and the Internet) upon
which an individual can start building their wealth is. I think it's
reasonable to pay a certain amount to level the playing field at the bottom so
those that are determined and principled can reasonably begin creating wealth,
but that's a totally different goal compared to reducing wealth inequality.
Basic income for example would be a great way to begin meeting needs so
individuals can start building wealth.

If wealth inequality were the problem, the 10% should complain about the 1%
and the 1% should complain about the 0.1% and the 0.1% should complain about
the 0.01%, so on and so forth.

------
WalterBright
I wouldn't discount the probability that some people know how to handle money
and how to make money, and they transmit this knowledge to their kids. I
attended public schools K-12 and do not recall a single lesson on handling
money or making money.

------
dudul
It sucks, but what's the solution? Because let's face it, the primary purpose
of "being rich" is to provide for one's family, at least from my point of
view. If I work my ass off it's to make sure I can help my kids do better than
I did.

What's the point of being "wealthy" if it's not to help your kids have a
better life than your own?

I don't want to sound insensitive. All these studies about kids born in
poverty and unable to escape it sound very unfair. On the other hand, there
has to be a reason for people seeking wealth. And taking care of your children
has to be the main driver.

~~~
adamnemecek
Fix the fucking educational system and stop wasting people's time.

~~~
harryh
The educational system is a scapegoat for far bigger and more entrenched
problems.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Exactly.

I strongly suggest to speak with some actual teachers, instead of blindly
relying on ridiculous propaganda. The problem is not the system, the problem
is social mobility.

Poor kids don't do well in school because their families and their environment
don't value education. They perceive (correctly, BTW, from a statistical
perspective) that if you're born poor, there isn't much you can do. You're
gonna die poor anyway. So why worry about school? Families don't care
(exceptions do exist, of course), peers look down upon you if you're
"bookish", it's a vicious cycle.

There's a lack of hope among those at the bottom. No amount of educational
reform will fix that. People know they're in a social straightjacket from
birth.

Fix whatever systemic problems keep America's social mobility so low, and the
aforementioned issues will get a lot better.

~~~
peller
> Poor kids don't do well in school because their families and their
> environment don't value education.

Have you considered the possibility that the educational system doesn't value
the needs of the poor?

~~~
vixen99
And if it did, how would that work or operate?

~~~
peller
What I was getting at is that the subject matter often isn't applicable to
helping them solve their specific problems. Education (curriculums) shouldn't
be one-size-fits-all.

~~~
Kalium
What subject matters do you think are substantially neglected by the American
educational system that fails to reflect the needs of the poor? How should
curricula be changed? What specific problems are unaddressed?

~~~
adamnemecek
The main issue is that you don't really learn anything in depth. You get some
sort of very general overview but your knowledge still has so many gaps. If
you make the educational system more efficient, when you leave the reformed
high school, you might actually be somewhat proficient at X.

~~~
Kalium
It sounds like your complaint is that the basic primary/secondary educational
system does not produce specialists. Have you considered the possibility that
neither primary nor secondary education serves the purpose of specialist
training, that being reserved for tertiary education?

The purpose of the current design for primary and secondary education is to
produce a general foundation atop which any sort of tertiary education can be
built.

~~~
adamnemecek
My main issues are the lack of efficiency and lack of educational freedom.

> The purpose of the current design for primary and secondary education is to
> produce a general foundation atop which any sort of tertiary education can
> be built.

Yeah, it's not very good at that.

~~~
Kalium
It's relatively efficient compared to alternative currently available
approaches. We have not reached a point where Khan Academy and Udemy can
replace everything - or even a major part - of education after basic literacy
and numeracy.

The model of turning a literate child loose in a library and letting them be
for six or eight years should not be assumed as universally useful.

------
guilt
I don't think some people realize the value of a hard day's night. I think it
is completely fine to pretend they didn't exist.

And finally - I don't respect the rich and the meaningless kind that have been
plaguing corporate America for years.

~~~
wutbrodo
> I don't think some people realize the value of a hard day's night.

What do you mean by a hard day's night? AFAIK this expression was invented by
the Beatles for their eponymous song and means something like "a rough day".
But that doesn't really make sense in the context of your comment so I'm
wondering if there's some usage that I (and a quick googling) am unaware of.

------
known
TL;DR

It's not quite a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose game where rich kids get better
educations, yet still get ahead even if they don't—but it's close enough. And
if it keeps up, the American Dream will be just that.

------
nikhilsimha
The study also doesn't mention anything about what percent of rich kids
dropout of HIGH SCHOOL vs what percent of poor kids finish COLLEGE.

------
aantix
"opportunity hoarding"

>That includes everything from legacy college admissions to unpaid internships
that

>let affluent parents rig the game a little more in their children's favor.

Why does the author imply something sinister with economic division? I want my
kid to succeed, so I fight for his chance to succeed. I have high end skills
to offer, first in line to learn from me? My children.

This isn't deliberate exclusion of everyone unprivileged, it's hyper-inclusion
of only the ones I love the most.

------
Animats
(2014)

------
usmeteora
This is interesting. I was a scholarship kid to a private boarding school, and
then went on to get a scholarship at a private university that was $50k+ a
year in tuition. I need to preface that I met a lot of good smart hardworking
kids who did alot of great things with their education and their parents
taught them good work ethic. Alot of the parents worked hard for their success
and knew instilling good work ethics was important. I also went to an
Engineering University so more likely that smart successful people there were
inclined to have valuable degrees to put to work than say maybe a school where
Political Science dominated the potential work atmosphere.

Anyways, despite this, there were these disease ridden people called
"helicopter parents". The angry moms who believed their genius little sons
didnt belong at ANY place beneath what they deemed to be good enough for them,
which of course was only the Ivy Leagues or perhaps the trailing 5 after (but
only because they DECIDED, not because they couldnt get in ugh how dare you
make such an assumption).

The sons, these rich little beleagured alcoholics had been drinking their way
through highschool as their parents shoved them into every extracurricular
they could think of and 1\. Made them feel they were never enough while
simultaneously sending the message they were privileged geniuses who were
entitled to the best --> that mindset will screw with ya abit and I witnessed
it in the guy I dated for 3.5 years from college

2\. Completely strips away their ability to have a. self initiative b. be
curious and have confidence in their own intelligence

This leads to a lot of rich entitled kids who simultaneously had low self
esteem and no idea what they wanted to do with their lives and were
alcoholics.

My ex is interesting particularly because his 4 closest friends were all just
like him/similiar background. They all have brand new sports cars fresh out of
college and 3 of them have totaled them drunk driving and should be in jail or
loaded down with fines and lost their jobs. Needless to say parents payed for
lawyers, court, new cars and hooked every single one of them up with jobs and
when they "get sad" they can go home and layout at their pools while their
mothers dote on them.

My ex before I met him was "depressed" because he wished he could go to state
school so his parents sent him to Denmark to party in Europe for a Semester to
"cheer" him up....

These kids don't have any sense of consequence for their actions or any idea
what its like to work to get into college. They actually have the attitude of
being dragged there against their will...

As someone who started on welfare very young and eventually reached lower
middle class, going to my college was a dream come true...

Let me tell you though in our 20s ill be paying off student loans and working
hard but I am a much happier more intelligent curious person and love my job.
These kids are miserable alcoholics bored with life and sitting in jobs their
parents put them in.

Their snapshot wealth portfolio may look better than mine ....for now, but
they are not happier. They may inherit their parents houses and money but they
will still be bored and sad and drinking all the time.

That being said, I know alot of kids who are wealthy and genuinely doing well
in life though. I think it is opportunity hoarding when kids who don't want to
be in college are forced to go to college, and while some of these kids are
obnoxious, upon years of observation I mostly blame the parents for exerting
their awful pretentiousness and ways of life onto these kids who basically
feel helpless like they don't have any other choice.

------
blfr
_But, of course, it 's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a
matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more
hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child's
formative early years. That's why, as Stanford professor Sean Reardon
explains, "rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better
prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students," and they're staying
that way._

It's also a matter of genes. Actually, mostly a matter of genes because this
is by far the biggest influence parents have on their kids. Affluent parents
pass high IQ and conscientiousness to their children which are critical for
the rest of their lives. That's why, as anyone who skimmed the twin studies or
maybe on of these new fancy GWAS can explain, rich children increasingly exit
the womb better prepared to succeed in life and they stay that way. (That and
the fact that we removed most of environmental instults.)

It doesn't end there either. They will also be wealthier, healthier, and live
longer. "All good things tend to go together, as do all bad ones."

~~~
abrahamepton
This is one of the most HN comments ever. Without getting into the nature-vs-
nurture debate for the trillionth time, "Actually, mostly a matter of genes
because this is by far the biggest influence parents have on their kids" is a
totally preposterous statement. Genes are certainly AN influence, but I think
my parents' encouraging my nerdiness, buying me a graphing calculator in high
school and surrounding me with computers my whole life had something to do
with how I got interested in computers and subsequently developed a career out
of it.

That's just not an option for a lot of kids, and that has zilch to do with
genes. But hey, keep thinking Ayn Rand's not full of shit, Hackernews :)

~~~
rustynails
My view is anecdotal. I come from a family with adopted children. My siblings
say how I talk, act and think like our parents. I am the only biological child
of our parents.

Does this prove IQ? No. however, I would be astounded if there was no
relationship (just looks, voice, height, thought patterns, but no IQ
correlation).

At the same time, my kids are quite different from each other. However, my
siblings' kids reflect their parents and have diverged significantly from my
family far more so than my kids diverge from each other.

My eldest brother (as an example), earned good money but spent it all. He put
very little love or effort into his kids, despite him being raised in a
household of caring and sharing. He's also a drinker and drug taker. His kids
all have troubles with drugs and alcohol.

This is nothing like my family. We have continued down a path of caring and
sharing and support quite a few community activities.

I'm not inclined to equate IQ directly, but, I am strongly inclined to say
"there is a lot more than just looks that gets passed down to children".

My eldest sister is a behavioural clone of her biological mother. They didn't
know each other until their 20s. That was the moment I knew that behaviour
could be inherited by children, because my eldest sister is an aggressive
hedonist. No drugs, just wild partying and ladette behaviour.

The other aspect of this article that is true is that luck favours the
prepared. Some people send their kids to private schools so they can Mingle
with other well-to-dos.

What I do like about today's society is that there is a wealth of opportunity
if you look for it, regardless of socioeconomic status. I am a huge believer
in opportunity but I totally reject political correctness (and any other
prejudice for that matter, PC just happens to be the most popular prejudice
today).

~~~
phs318u
You raise some really interesting points. I've seen similar as well. But what
I draw is not so much that there's an IQ gene (though I'm sure that there are
genes that affect brain physiology in some ways), but more so that there are
known genes that affect compulsive behaviours which can trump rational
processes e.g. addiction, risk-taking.

And while I'm sure lifestyle factors (including nurture, environment) may
impact the "degree" to which the expression of these genes "take hold on
behaviour", the overall probabilities are more likely to be based on the
genetics. I'm thinking similar to how genes increase likelihood of getting
cancer, while behaviour/lifestyle can affect treatment outcomes.

------
hackaflocka
Back a couple of decades ago in India. I was working for an American telecoms
co. I grew pally with an HR manager. He showed me the background on a new
hire. The new hire was the son of a mid-level government official cum career
civil servant in a dept that oversaw the telecoms industry.

I saw the letter Daddy wrote ON HIS OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT LETTERHEAD...
addressed to the head of the Indian division of the telcoms co... recommending
his own son for a job.

My point? It's not just rich kids. It's also well connected kids. In high-
regulation environments, government officials, although they may not be rich,
have the highest access.

------
jomamaxx
I worked at a Fortune 50 and we hired a lot of interns.

After I left, I thought back on the kids we hired, how talented they were, and
what they went off to do afterwards.

The 'rich kids' were better prepared, more responsible, better communicators,
had a better sense of the vision for the company and the consequences of what
we were doing.

'College education' is surely causative to some degree, but in America, most
wealth is not inherited, and those parents who can afford 'activities' for
their kids are probably far, far better parents than others. It's not the
'activities' that I think develops the kids, I think it's the very fact that
these parents are investing a lot of time and energy in their kids, teaching
them positive behaviours that matters much more.

I wish I had the link but I read a study a while back that showed that 'rich
parents' were far more conscientious than other parents.

I don't doubt that money is a big advantage, as well as social class, but it
would be foolhardy to think that these are the fundamental issues.

Rich kids are posited as 'brats' in films and TV because it's populist - most
viewers are not rich. And of course - those douches exist. By by enlarge,
upper-middle class kids are great. I would bet they make better players than
otherwise _on average_.

I should also point out that kids from communities wherein they were not seen
as lower class - i.e. rural communities, seem to have decent dispositions as
well, and at least by the numbers, they didn't have a lot of money. But it
doesn't cost a lot to have a stable home / good parents out in the sticks.

~~~
xapata
Blaming "culture" is often an excuse for shoddy research.

How would you measure "conscientiousness" if you were designing a study to
correlate that with wealth?

------
jimmies
Dropping out of high school isn't "doing everything wrong" and finishing
college is pretty far from "doing everything right" so this seems to be a
little bit of editorial journalism.

From the paper: "Children who go on to achieve a college degree, irrespective
of their parents’ income, are more likely to make it to the top income
quintile [...] Bottom-income children without a diploma have a 54% probability
of remaining on the bottom rung as adults."

So really what it says is that you have a much better shot in life being
educated regardless of who you are. But if you don't like to stay in school,
you'd better be rich, because there are some chances you will end up being
rich anyway. If you are poor and don't stay in school, you are very likely
just live your life miserably.

~~~
randomdata
_> So really what it says is that you have a much better shot in life being
educated regardless of who you are._

Not quite. All it says that the people who are able to do well in school also
are able to do well in the workplace.

If you want to try and derive causation here, the simplest and most reasonable
explanation is that the qualities that allowed them to do well in school are
also what allowed them to do well in the workplace. It does not seem shocking
at all to think that those who have drive, desire, ability, etc. perform
better in everything they do, be it education or the workplace.

The idea that schooling magically turns you into a new person able to finally
succeed for the first time seems like a huge stretch.

~~~
jimmies
That's better. There is some back-and-forth between the how much drive one has
correlated with how far can one get in education, but I totally agree that you
have a more direct narrative of what the paper claims.

