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by aj0strow 3679 days ago
I would agree it's not income. That's just correlation.

It's whether your parents taught you to read by age 5, cooked vegetables for dinner, encouraged you to play an instrument, drove you to tournaments on weekends, picked a neighbourhood with an IB program even if that means no yard, paid for braces, etc etc.

Patents with low income can choose to do formative things, with personal sacrifice.

Anecdotally, social mobility happens when your parents choose to prioritize you, and you also somehow get introduced to the good life and determine to 'make it' at whatever cost.
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thenomad 3679 days ago
Do you have data for that? It's a statement that sounds like it makes sense, but so do a lot of statements in this sort of discussion.

(I'm not disagreeing. Intuitively I'd tend to agree with you that those things would have a measureable effect. I just don't trust intuition in this sort of thing. :) )

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aj0strow 3679 days ago
I don't have data, only personal experience. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerted_cultivation

Malcolm Gladwell writes about this too, in Outliers [1] (chapters 3 and 4). His aim was to dispel the myth that success derives from intelligence.

[1]: https://www.amazon.ca/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwel...

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