[adventured]

Some of that depends on how you want to define commonly. White and asian Americans have a near 40% chance of becoming millionaires with a graduate level education.

Without a high school diploma, white Americans have a mere 1.7% chance of becoming a millionaire. A 20+ fold difference.

"What Are Your Odds of Becoming a Millionaire?"

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-millionaire-odds/

"Bloomberg News asked economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis a question: Would it be possible to calculate the odds of being a millionaire for anyone in the U.S., based on age, education and race?"

"According to the sample, a black person’s odds of being a millionaire increase from less than 1 percent if he or she doesn't complete high school to 6.7 percent with a graduate degree. White Americans without a high school diploma start out with slightly better chances—1.7 percent—that rapidly improve with more school: A graduate-level education increases their probability of amassing a net worth greater than $1 million to 37 percent."

[nosefrog]

That's correlation, not necessarily causation.

[adventured]

No, it's very obvious causation.

The variance is extreme, not subtle, and it shows dramatic improvement for all races. It moves upwards step by step with education attainment. Incomes similarly follow that path. Which is another way of saying, everything aligns. The income you can reach on average without a high school diploma, will radically implode your chances of ever being able to amass millionaire status.

Need to save $50,000 to start a business? Good luck without a high school diploma. You're going to spend your life barely getting by, much less generating a surplus of savings.

Want to become a millionaire via a mixture of 401k, company stock grants, savings, real-estate investment? You have a near zero shot at that without a high school diploma.

[misja111]

That doesn't prove causation. There can be many underlying causes that explain the success of educated people just as well. For instance, as already mentioned, it might be that kids that are smart or work hard tend to finish a higher education. It could also be that kids who are born in wealthier families do both get access to better education and get more opportunities afterwards because of their better network.

That last possibility does a much better job at explaining what the Bloomberg article is about: the different chances of success based on the color of your skin. Black students that graduate still have only 6.7% chance of becoming millionaires comparing to 37% for white people.

[adventured]

You're context dropping at the end. The critical context for the causation in question, is that for all races, education stepping higher coincides to substantial increases in likelihood of wealth attainment.

There are no exceptions that see a backwards regression (ie move up in education and down in wealth likelihood), which further boosts that it is very clear causation. Each step sees the average move considerably higher for all races.

[jcranmer]

No. It's correlation that's not a statistical fluke, but it's not causation. There are other potential explanations that the data doesn't rule out, such as wealth being highly inherited (i.e., rich people are begat from rich people) and wealthy children being pushed into higher tiers of education than poor people.

The existence of these other explanations show that the data is not necessarily indicative of causation.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It's correlation. The cause is rationed access to the cultural - never mind the economic - resources needed to get into a graduate program.

Success after the program is an effect - and partly down to luck, as the SA article suggests.

Of course you'll have problems if you don't have a high school diploma. But by the time you've failed to get your diploma, the chances are excellent that your access to resources will have been severely constrained and rationed for your entire life, even if you start off with exceptional talents.

[adventured]

It's cause. What you're referring to is the cause of education deprivation. That education deprivation is the cause of the far lower likelihood of reaching higher wealth status.

A chain of things or events can - typically does - possess multiple causes along the pathing. A cause of a cause, is a legitimate, normal and required logical concept. Practically any outcome or condition you can name has a cause, which has a cause.

Alternatively you'd have to claim that there can only be one cause in an entire chain of events. An absurd notion.

[abecedarius]

It can be causal and still be a wasteful signaling game. I think that to first order that's what's going on.

[Retric]

Someone with an IQ of 70 is not going to have a graduate education. In this case education and wealth would both be results not causes.

Similarly, having well off parents drastically increases the chances of getting a graduate degree.

[jpadkins]

> Without a high school diploma,

What is the cause of not completing high school? what about lack of IQ. There is a hidden variable that causes both not passing high school and not being a millionaire.

[huehehue]

I don't think it's as simple as that. Plenty of intelligent people don't finish high school for a number of reasons -- medical issues, problems at home, some simply drop out because they need to start working full-time to afford living.

That's not to say that all of those people would have necessarily gone on to become millionaires, but it's really hard to improve your situation if you don't have that momentum.

[derivt]

Why is American capitalized and asian isn't?

[adventured]

Since you decided to dedicate your first ever HN post to that inquiry, I'll give you my personal reasoning.

Both black and white are very commonly lower-case. For example in the Bloomberg article, they refer several times to "black person's" and "black." I consider it incorrect to upper-case a racial identifier if you're not going to upper-case them all. I alternatively could upper-case Black and White, however I also consider that wrong, and borderline stupid (again, my personal opinion).

If I were referring to a specific national heritage, I would upper-case. Vietnamese American. Nigerian American. German American. And so on.

I also would not upper-case "a Tall American" in description of someone. A person that is an asian American is not necessarily from Asia, asian is their race. A person is not from "black" or "white" either. It's as ridiculous to upper-case asian in this use, as it would be to upper-case Brown Eyed American or Green Eyed American or "the Freckled American."

[meric]

There’s white people in Asia, peach people in Asia, light brown people, dark people, black people in Asia.

But then you wouldn’t call a black Asian a black person, he’d just be South Asian.

Therefore since your use of colours is tied to the location of the person’s ancestors, Asia referring to the continent, oughtn’t it be capitalised?

[stagbeetle]

American is a proper noun in this case. White and asian (or should I rephrase it as "Asian and white?"), are used as descriptive adjectives here, also. If it were rephrased as "Whites and Asians, from America," then it would be capitalized because all three are now proper nouns.

[dragonwriter]

White and Asian are proper adjectives in the sentence, and would normally be capitalized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_adjective

[stagbeetle]

Proper adjectives are for British English only. Even so, I don't see them often nor do I know of any current English grammar texts or thought leaders that recognize proper adjectives.

[dragonwriter]

> Proper adjectives are for British English only.

No, they aren't.

> Even so, I don't see them often nor do I know of any current English grammar texts or thought leaders that recognize proper adjectives.

Chicago Manual of Style and AP Stylebook, two of the leading American style guides, both recognize proper adjectives.

[stagbeetle]

For the British English claim, I have no source nor can I find one. It's what I was taught long ago and that the Fowler brothers use it implicitly in all of their series.

However, I do have a rebuttal to your style guides. They are only that: descriptivist style guides. They clash with one another and are nothing more than another dialect of English. Whereas Loweth's English Grammar, the recognized beginners in English prescriptivism standard, does not recognize proper adjectives.

[mywittyname]

Because white is the first word in that sentence.

[derivt]

Sorry, I am not a native English speaker, but I think it should be White Asian, do you say white americans?

Also, Google accused in lawsuit of excluding white and Asian men in hiring to boost diversity

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/03/01/google-a...

[leereeves]

> I think it should be White Asian, do you say white americans?

We do say "White Americans", meaning Americans who are "white", which means people whose ancestors were Europeans (including Russia), or from Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, North Africa, or some (but not all) other Muslim areas.

Then "Asian" includes everyone else whose ancestors were from Asia: China, Japan, India, Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, etc.

When combined with nationality or geographical location, race is said first, so "White Asian" would mean someone living in Asia whose ancestors were European, most likely, though it's not a phrase I've heard.

[autokad]

I am not great with grammar, however I think its always supposed to be capitalized. that being said, i dont read too much into it in a hn post. Its sort of random for me, depends how tired my fingers are to leave the home keys

[jcranmer]

English grammar generally follows the rule that proper nouns and derivations thereof are capitalized. So the proper way to write it would be white, black, Asian, Hispanic (also Latino/Latina), Native American (or Indian or Amerindian), Pacific Islander, etc. Note the difference between native American and Native American.

[DrScump]

  proper nouns and derivations thereof are capitalized

Not when used as adjectives, as in the given example. Had it been hyphenated, creating a lone noun, "Asian-American" would work.

[dragonwriter]

Proper adjectives (adjectives derived from proper nouns) are generally capitalized in English.