| > Either way, it's a fact that parental income is the best predictor of future income. Not educational attainment. Sure, but they are interrelated factors and they way they effect the distribution is complicated. This study was linked elsewhere and does control for parent's income: (I didn't vet the methodology or data, just looking at what their reported results say.) https://research.upjohn.org/empl_research/vol23/iss3/1/ One of the reasons that parental income is such a strong predictor of child income is because parental income has a strong effect on how much college will increase your income. Interestingly enough, that effect is quite disparate based on more than just parental income. The study says that low income whites see only a 12% boost to income from college while high income whites see a 131% boost to income from college. Interestingly, blacks show an even higher boost to income from college, 175%, and parental income had no statistically significant effect on this boost. Also interesting is how those effects play out when you look at different parts of the income distribution. Parental income increases the average effect of college, but doesn't significantly affect the median effect. Thus a lot of the increase to the effect of college on average incomes [edit: for children of higher income parents] is from gaining access to the long tail of very high income outcomes. So the answer is if you are a poor white male, college is far less valuable than if you are female, rich or black (in increasing order of college effect size.) |