Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong

[eridani]

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/?tid=a_inl

Even poor kids who do everything right don't do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. You can see that in the above chart, based on a new paper from Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's annual conference, which is underway.

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.

What's going on? Well, it's all about glass floors and glass ceilings. Rich kids who can go work for the family business — and, in Canada at least, 70 percent of the sons of the top 1 percent do just that — or inherit the family estate don't need a high school diploma to get ahead. It's an extreme example of what economists call "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.

But even if they didn't, low-income kids would still have a hard time getting ahead. That's, in part, because they're targets for diploma mills that load them up with debt, but not a lot of prospects. And even if they do get a good degree, at least when it comes to black families, they're more likely to still live in impoverished neighborhoods that keep them disconnected from opportunities.

[abelenkpe]

1. K&R

[Igel]

2. So what are the actual numbers like?

Not the percents, which dispose of sample size.

You always want to know the sample size.

Once was stuck in a situation where something of interest was happening 75% of the time, according to a monograph written by a reasonably well respected scholar. It was lbased on corpus linguistics, and the database was very large. It seemed like a really impressive number. The professor in charge of the class asked us if this seemed impressive, we all nodded, and she ordered us to check out the end notes. The number of instances was 4. 3 out of 4 times. Suddenly the significance of the finding was meaningless.

Even if the significance of the findings in the OP is high, it matters if we're talking 100 wealthy kids and 10,000 poor kids or 100 each. And not in the study, but in the population. I could imagine that the rich kid sample might be fairly exhaustive, while the poor kid sample might be regional or much smaller than the universe of poor kids.

Seems like a detail, but, again, this is an area where research is advocacy. The desire to be shown right exerts a corrupting influence on all research, and competes with the desire to be accurate. But when advocacy gets involved, the desire to have power, to set agendas, to play savior, to help society and refashion it makes the mere desire to win your point seem trite and trivial.

I'd also point out that the desire of rich parents to help their kids is no better or worse than the desire of poor parents to help their kids. We "get" when a poor mother defends her kid, but somehow wealthy mothers are supposed to kick their kids to the curb. BTW, how the wealthy help their kids is often more effective in many ways that often have less to do with $ and more to do with knowledge of how the system works.

[Enrique]

3. SNL skit with Bush and Jenna

no video unfortunately because it was very funny, but here is the transcript:


President George W. Bush: Heck no, heck no. In fact, come a little closer, let me tell you a story, tell you a little story about a guy with a C minus average, who was a failure in business, who was just fartin' around down in Texas. Partyin', drinkin', doin' blow. You know what happened to that guy?

Jenna Bush: No, what?

President George W. Bush: He went to jail, 'cause he was poor and Mexican.

(They laugh)

President George W. Bush: But there was another guy doing the same stuff. But his dad was in charge of the CIA, then vice-president, then president. Do you know what happened to him?

Jenna Bush: I think I do.

President George W. Bush: He became president. I'm talking about me.

[Jitter65]

4. Racism is at the core.

Hillary is correct...it more than just reigning in Wall Street...that actually funds many higher education programs.

[hunter]

5. George Carlin: It's a big club and you ain't in it.