Why rich parents have rich children
voxeu.org
voxeu.org
My parents grew up poor in a war-torn country. They left the country as soon as they could. However, they concentrated on education, and left on scholarships. My family lived a very middle class life but much better than anything my parents lived in. They had the exact same focus on education for me and my siblings. They sacrificed everything for our education. I went to a public school but I studied harder and worked harder than most of my friends, and I'm now a single-digit millionaire, which isn't very much in Silicon Valley but good enough for me. I'm currently retired at this point while I take care of my kids and my wife works because she wants to. My children will get the same focus on education and hard work, the way I did. My family went from poor to rich in a single generation.
Our cleaner is an illegal immigrant from Central America. Her daughter was born in the US and is going to a very prestigious private high school in the Bay Area and has plans of going to Yale. I know she will do it. They are also going from poor to rich in a single generation.
Generational mobility from poor to rich is easily possible, but you can only do it through hard work and education.
Yes, if you bust ass all your life, have parents with professional middle-class values (regardless of actual income) and work in what is likely one of the easiest professions to develop wealth with in a period of time when a software engineer makes an abnormally high income in relationship to peers in other professions, sure, you'll do well.
But that's not really the issue.
The issue is that children of wealthy parents, for sure, study and make an effort to do well in school. But the required effort is just a _fraction_ of what a child of a wealthy parent needs to do.
A wealthy parent can pay for a tutor for a child who doesn't have much interest or curiosity in preparing of standardized tests, and the tutor will guide him/her to the extracurriculars that academics value. By contrast, a poor child with no tutors and no particular desire to do test prep, all other things being equal, just won't do.
What will happen to the child of your cleaner when she wants to attend the expensive vacation holidays of her peers, where undoubtedly a lot of socialization will go on where many will exit college with opportunities that she won't have, because she wasn't in the right place at the right time?
What about if she wants to pursue a career that isn't really profitable for many years? A wealthy teenager can take a gap year, switch careers, pay for a psychiatrist if they have some mental issue that for them will just be a simple obstacle, but for someone without the means can be career-ending.
No one is questioning _your_ ability to reach for success. Just understand that for wealthy people, a lot of your effort was just unnecessary, and they likely arrived at the same place you did with with less stress, better sleep, more parties, many more days off and a lot more opportunity to just take life easy.
Your wealth required you to pick the particular career path that enabled it, but other choices would have likely ended either in poverty or much less wealth. A wealthy child can pursue his or her dream opportunities with far fewer concerns on that front, knowing that they're covered.
My parents came from a much poorer background than me. They busted ass, taught me the same values, still work hard.
Frankly, I just don't work as hard, but I went to a great high school with _very_ wealthy peers who taught me the secrets of the upper classes, and I purposely chose this profession as a software engineer to my advantage, which has allowed me to take gap years, travel the world, and do a lot of things that a lot of my peers, who work much harder, longer hours, and more stressful positions in other industries will never get to do. That's not a declaration of my skills, but rather an assertion of the deep inequality and unfairness of the system.
Abnormal even when the value created is considered?
Most people just really don't like doing software no matter how well it pays.
One can remind oneself that a child neither chooses their genetic inheritance nor their social environment which may lead to a hard-working mentality and the opportunities that comes with studying and making efforts.
But I agree that the stickiness of wealth among Americans generally isn't because they actually value education as a tool of mobility. Rather it's more because education is understood as a class signifier; something that's expected of their class. That's why so many wealthy politicians and pundits who claim college is overemphasized and demand that it should be unnecessary for a middle-class lifestyle couldn't even fathom their own kids not going to the best college possible.
And the failure of other groups to achieve what East and South Asian immigrants have is precisely because they've internalized (e.g. whites and blacks) or brought with them (e.g. Mexican immigrants) the same working-class ethic that has always predominated in American culture. In American culture, as in perhaps most cultures around the world, only the elite valued higher education, and they did so for the aforementioned reasons. Not that "go to school" hasn't been oft recited in modern American culture. It's just that it's mostly a half-hearted refrain. American culture values hard work and personal sacrifice above all else, and "book learning" is considered neither hard work nor a sacrifice. Contrast that w/ some other cultures, especially many (but not all) Asian cultures, not to mention European Jewish culture, where formal study is very much considered hard work and a personal sacrifice.
None of which is to say luck isn't involved in individual success. Of course it is. Indeed, to some meaningful degree it's always a factor. But all that tells us is that we should refrain from judging lack of success as a personal failure, not that agency and cultural values are irrelevant to the probability of success.
Also, it goes without saying that a child who grows up w/ and internalizes cultural norms will find it far easier to exercise and apply those norms. As example, someone who never grew up brushing their teeth might find it exceptionally difficult to adopt and maintain that habit as an adult. Whereas someone who grew up doing that would find it difficult to lose that habit. Yet another reason to avoid comparing and judging personal character based on outcomes. At the same time, very clearly norms matters, and some norms are to be preferred over others.
[1] Because of the direct and indirect effects of the Mandarin exam system. But more recently see also [2].
[2] Because they tend to be middle-class self-selected to value, if not having already achieved, significant educational achievement.
That doesn't sounds like "easily possible".
If your family didn’t leave the war torn country you would’ve been screwed.
The same thing with the undocumented immigrant managing to get into the country.
Same as our cleaner. She illegally immigrated into Mexico first, but realized how racist Mexicans were against Central Americans, so she decided to work her way so that she could get into the US. This isn't luck, it's hard work. She didn't accidentally find herself in the US.
Your cleaner lady is such a silly example. If she was deported would you say she didn’t work hard enough to prevent it? Lol
And even if they did work hard your situation is entirely luck regardless since well, you didn’t help them escape with your hard work, yet you benefited.
This is different from people who have been living in the land of opportunity for multiple generations. They have had the opportunity, so that is not the limiting factor. Often it is ability and/or willingness that are limiting factors.
Nevertheless, such rags to riches stories can be found here too: Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs both grew up poor (and were both adopted) but became rich in a single generation.
The fact that your parents invested in education that much means that someone already invested in them and their education way before you were born.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-d...
2) Correlations with higher education levels result in a greater emphasis on education for their children
3) Ability to paying for advancement & enrichment opportunities
4) Larger social networks of other successful people that can be tapped for opportunities
A similar study.
Been a month since I read it, but if iirc this study examined the relationship between Norwegian adoptive parents and their Korean adopted children. They found, unsurprisingly, that the Korean adopted children tended to be more wealthy, suggesting wealth acquisition traits are culturally learned (to some degree). This conclusion pairs neatly with the op post.
So, I don't think it is as simple as your comment.