In the white trash southern town where I grew up being a teacher at $35k/yr is considered one of the better jobs available. Military service is the best option for young men who want to provide a living wage to their families, especially since no education is required. A few dozen doctors and dentists and veterinarians make bank and live like kings (not really joking... think giant sailboats docked at their beach mansions with 4 car garages), but a big part of the problem is that there is no middle class. There's a huge chasm between $35k and $350k, with no opportunities. In a community that is that poor even entrepreneurship seems like an impossible choice. How can you make money in that community when nobody has got 2 pennies to rub together?
Another problem is that the culture does not value those things which empower young people to rise. Even among the top 5% of my high school class, I knew people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their church, or needed to stay home to help care and provide for members of their family. It's traditional and tribal, and looking off toward the horizon and going away for fancy schooling just doesn't rank highly on most peoples' priorities. In a community where many kids' parents attended the same high schools and the grandparents are local, wanting to leave is considered odd.
The only reason I'm not still there today is that for some reason, as a nerd and social outcast, I rejected that path from an early age and my top priority out of high school was to get the hell out. School was hell, but I consider myself fortunate not to be working minimum wage jobs and living in a trailer park like two of my siblings.
Growing up in Hattiesburg, MS, innovation was stagnant. There were no technology related jobs other than Tech Support at Comcast(who I regarded as pure evil at the time).
People do not want to leave Hattiesburg. It is completely foreign to them. They want to marry young, have children, and stay within a few blocks of their family.
Move to California? You're going to fall into the ocean. Move to New York? Too much city. Move to Texas? Too hot. Each of those arguments is easily debunked. The humidity makes it hotter in MS.
My life changing moment was taking a Greyhound to Wisconsin with $1,000 and starting my life over. Afterwards, I moved from place to place knowing I could make it where ever I ventured to.
I have female friends in MS who got Masters/Ph.Ds and married the same year they got the piece of paper. Never used it once. It saddens me. Some of those people are brilliant beyond my abilities. Yet, they chose to follow the culture of the community.
People are so miserable there, but it all by choice. My mother had cerebral palsy and received a check for $500/month. We lived in a trailer, and I made it out when I was ~21-23. I had no car, fallback, or family to depend on. I just had to take a risk and go with the flow. It pays off well now.
I have offered people from MS jobs here or connections to jobs here. They would never take that bus.
This attitude--which I more often than not share with you--suffers strongly of confirmation bias and a lack of empathy. You, we, tend to believe that the priorities we've chosen are better than those of everyone else, and are obviously so. Pursuing knowledge, technology, wealth, is of course a higher aim than raising a family. It's obvious, right? But it's not. They choose "to follow the culture of the community" because the culture is important to them. Because, perhaps, success, to them is made up of different things than it is for us.
I can really appreciate this opinion of my comment. It is truly genuine and a great analysis! There is much more truth to your words than I would like to admit in other facets of my life.
Their priority is indeed far from mine. Many times, I find it hard to empathize and easier to just point the finger at the obvious choices they have made.
Yet, there is a community type punishment and resentment for people who fall into these traps of life. Prioritize reproduction over stability. OK! Community rules: 1) Don't come to 'us' for handouts. 2) Don't get on welfare/medicaid because you dug yourself into a hole. 3) Don't fall into the great apathy device of drugs to help you forget.
If you break the rules, you will be shamed and feel guilty.
The glorious church folk at the Southern Baptist Church in Oak Grove began the silent treatment on my family due to my great grandmother utilizing the meals on wheels services in the area.
Poorness is not acceptable, in some of the poorest communities of the US. It is absolutely glorious.
There is just so much more than I could hope to explain in a comment. The racism, classism, politics, and circular ideologies that are passed down in those areas is a novel on its own.
You are correct. I pity their choice, and often feel my choices are superior. Yet, more often than not, they also pity their choices, and envy my choices.
And I guess that's the important dichotomy here. There are many, many choices that people can make in life that are qualitatively neutral. For instance, the decision of those female Ph.D.s to value marriage over a career utilizing their education. It saddens you, because it does not mesh with your priorities, and so it seems like a bad choice. But qualitatively, it's just a difference of taste and preference.
But there are certainly choices that are qualitatively worse. Such as building, or letting yourself be dragged down by communities that destroy you with shame, racism, classism, politics, etc. Or, as you pointed out, the choice to ignore the imperative to create a foundation for one's family, to have some way to provide, if family is your priority. Because that is actually a failure of their own priorities as well.
We've just got to not muddle those types of choices too much. Our preferences vs. other's preferences vs. truly damaging choices.
The people he left behind may be happy and successful on their own terms, but they are not "socially mobile". It seems that social mobility depends on the culture of the area more than the cost of living.
Why should you be sad about personal choices others make? Stop judging people, learn to accept them and you'll be a happier person. For those "masters" - they likely put a higher priority on family than on career, so the view that they 'did nothing with it' is idiotic. They just have different priorities than you.
I wrote up this large spill about this being their personal feelings, financially drowning and overdrafting $500 each month. Husbands being the sole income providers ranging from $18k-29k a year for 2-4 kids. Jobs going at a very fast pace and very often not returning for a long period of time.
It is much akin to building a home without a foundation. Reproducing without a security blanket for when times are harsh is an equation for depression. I agree, they have different priorities, but there is not one group (out of my 7) that is happy with their choice. They are riddled with embarrassment and guilt. You get to the gas pump with $1.50 to put in the tank... and have a clean consciousness that you were correct in prioritizing a large family over creating a foundation. Don't worry though, the doctors still write prescriptions of Oxycotin, Valiums, and a myriad of antidepressants to reinforce that they made the right choice! I judge them not, I relay their silent cries that they hide from the community, because they fear communal judgment. A far greater damnation than my single judgement in that type of atmosphere.
I know a family in an expensive neighborhood of an elite east coast city where the wife has spent the 5 years since receiving her PhD at home with her kids.
I knew people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their church, or needed to stay home to help care and provide for members of their family.
Thing is, my success is not your success is not their success. If they lead happy and fulfilled lives in that way, is it wrong?
I get that, and I accept it. I'm just trying to explain my perspective on why people in these communities are unlikely to have much intergenerational mobility of the kind discussed in the article.
This sound very similar to where I grew up. I'm also from a "white trash" rural Southern area. And I grew up near the beach, so you saw huge contrast between the million dollar+ beach houses at the private end of the beach, and the rest of my county which was mostly rural, tobacco farms, timber logging for the paper companies, and Green Swamp[1].
I knew people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their church
Uuuggghh... "follow God"... uggh. Makes me want to puke. I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is just a cult, no better than any of the others, just bigger. And due to its prevalence and ubiquity, more damaging.
The only reason I'm not still there today is that for some reason, as a nerd and social outcast, I rejected that path from an early age and my top priority out of high school was to get the hell out.
Same here. This is why I have mixed feelings about a lot of the commentary on poverty and education and what-not, however. On the one hand, a lot of my county does live in poverty and maybe that argues for some of the social intervention stuff that the Socialist / Progressive camps tend to push for. OTOH, I know from experience that, even growing up somewhere like that, if you want to get out and go build a better life, it is possible. Yeah, it means moving away, but I don't see why that should be considered such a big deal... in the course of human history, people have always moved to new areas to look for better opportunities. Not all will, but those who are motivated to do so, do.
> Uuuggghh... "follow God"... uggh. Makes me want to puke. I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is just a cult, no better than any of the others, just bigger. And due to its prevalence and ubiquity, more damaging.
Those kinds of comments belong on /r/athiesm not here.
It's one thing to disagree with the choice of the person, the teachings of a particular branch, or even the idea of a God.
But statements like yours are equivalent to Christians walking around claiming that all gays are evil and will burn in hell.
They are stereotypical hate statements that lead to emotional responses instead of intellectual discussions.
While generally I agree with you, in this particular thread people are sharing personal, impressionistic origin stories.
He's providing colorful detail, a small part of a larger story, and offering a bit of emotional support for the earlier commenter's attitude. (He's not proselytizing, or inviting anti-/pro-religion as a main topic, though there's always a risk someone else will take it that way.)
I would suggest that in such a thread, there should be more space for heartfelt honesty, rather than self-censorship-for-the-sake-of-decorum-and-equanimity. There's a time and place for all styles and topics of communication... and it can shift in just a single screen or replying under a different parent comment.
Exactly. I'm not here to start a big atheism / christian debate, but my life experiences have left me with a very negative view of the outcomes associated with religious belief and some of the stereotypical mindsets you find among religious adherents, vis-a-vis education, achievement, etc.
I don't hate Christians, and - being from the "Bible Belt" - many of my family and friends are Christians. But I still consider it (and most - if not all - other religions) to be a scourge on society.
Hate doesn't enter into it, unless you take a pretty damn expansive view of what "hate" means. I think Christianity is damaging to society, but I don't hate anybody.
that lead to emotional responses instead of intellectual discussions.
So? Not every discussion is some deep intellectual debate which needs to be held to rigorous academic standards. Sometimes people are just talking and sharing observations.
But statements like yours are equivalent to Christians walking around claiming that all gays are evil and will burn in hell.
In reading anecdotes like this it seems that in the south, "Christianity" has been hijacked to have something to do with keeping up the status quo or patriotism or something, which is radically different from my experience (and not at all reflective of the bible). God doesn't live in Alabama, so I'm not sure why you'd have to follow him there....
In a "white trash southern town" isn't $35,000 a year likely to be solidly middle class? Just because there aren't a lot of $60-90,000 jobs doesn't mean that there is no middle class in a given area.
I'm sure it broke a lot of teachers' hearts to see intelligent, gifted pupils throw away a better life to stay in a small town and get by on a HS diploma.
Things are definitely relative. You couldn't rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Bay Area for my parent's mortgage on a three bedroom house, which my dad manages to pay as career military. But there is huge resentment against teachers because of how much they make compared to the bottom half in town.
My real concern isn't with the take home pay of the local college educated elite, but rather the tremendous gulf between what professionals make and what "regular people" make. By national standards the community doesn't have many truly wealthy, but the disparity is still there. For example, an acquaintance of mine who is a kindergarten teacher had to cancel a class field trip because her principal wasn't comfortable asking parents for $3/child to cover the busing cost. To me, that suggests a big problem with poverty.
I wonder what my teachers think of me? I never felt the need to leave my rural community and "get by" just fine on my HS diploma.
I remember in high school my peers would lament about getting out of here as soon as possible, but I never had the same affliction. I always felt I could bring the perks of the world to me, and feel like for the most part I have succeeded with that. I've maintained "big city" programming jobs for more than a decade now, and I get to do a little farming on the side for the enjoyment of it, which brings in it's own not-insignificant income.
I feel like I might lose a little bit on the entertainment side of life, especially as I get older, but frequent trips to the city does mitigate that problem somewhat. On the flip side, if anything, access to technology might be better here. For instance, the farm has a fibre optic connection to the internet and top notch cell service. I don't even find that when I visit the neighbouring cities. I think that is pretty important for someone with an interest in technology, like myself.
I guess I just don't see why teachers hearts would be broken. The rural life is pretty great, and really not all that limiting, in my opinion. Maybe once upon a time, but technology has bridged most of those gaps.
Clearly there is a world of difference between being a telecommuting programmer earning a large salary and remaining in your hometown because you want to be a stay-at-home parent and follow God.
I admittedly missed that context, but it doesn't exactly seem mutually exclusive either. Why can one not follow God, be a stay-at-home parent, while also being a telecommuting programmer (or whatever suits someone's interests and abilities)? Staying in a small town does not really seem to be the limiting factor.
That's not at all consistent with my experience. I'm from rural MS, but was educated in Memphis. I went back to a small town (population: 4,500) to run a business there. Before I moved on, we had built it up to just over 40 employees. Except for technical jobs (finding programmers was damn near impossible), general labor jobs were easy to fill with a variety of skill levels.
The people we paid $35,000 were quite well off in that in that town. Hell, I rented one of the largest houses in the area when I moved, and only paid $800/mo (for 4,000 sqft). Nice two bedrooms ran $400-450, with three bedrooms running a hundred or so more.
The single wide culture fell into three main camps, as far as I could see:
1) Those who bought land and put a single wide on it, so they could own their place. Usually the intention was to some day build a house. Not a horrible decision.
2) Those who were renting, and opted to have a smaller trailer on a lot of property (to be able to have horses, etc), instead of going for a real house in town. I can respect that decision too.
3) Those trapped in the "pay weekly" rent treadmill. I feel bad for this group, because they're paying as much or more overall for their trailer rent as a decent rental house ran. But it's almost as bad as the payday loan treadmill .. once you get on, it's hard to get off.
I didn't notice your reply otherwise I wouldn't have deleted my post. In my home town in northwestern MN there is an agricultural experiment station which paid $35,000 for a programming job a couple years ago. I made a spreadsheet and even as a single guy with my car paid off I'd only be able to save about $700 a month on that salary. And that's as a renter. Granted, heating costs are much more expensive in northwestern MN than they are in the south and a rental is a bit more expensive than $400. That said, if I had kids to support I would have had to live in a trailer park and would have qualified for food stamps.
I don't think that living in a rental and saving $700 a month is "solidly middle class" in the USA. Perhaps it is now, though, in a world of permanently diminished expectations.
You may be slightly out of touch if you think saving $700 a month is poor. Huge portions of America have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck. Many more have only a few hundred in savings total.
Not being able to save $700/month or to come up with $2,000 in an emergency situation in the USA is poor, no matter how much useless crap you bought with the rest of your money.
For some weird definition of "middle", I guess. "Middle class" is a designation without meaning, the kind of label that nearly everyone is eager to claim for themselves. Hardly anybody but the most indigent will admit they are poor, because in the US it's like admitting a moral failure. Otherwise you'd be middle class, just like everyone else.
Is the median $55k household in the US reasonably comfortable, able to have a family and buy a home without frequent financial stress over expenses like buying groceries, filling up the tank, or paying the water bill? If it's true that most Americans could not quickly produce $2000 in an emergency, I find that hard to believe. $55k DINKs are doing okay, but add a couple babies to the mix (not unreasonable for a "solidly middle class" family), and I think you're in for a rough time if you're saving for college and retirement like you ought.
I do go back to see my family and one teacher who had a big impact on me, but I'm not really good friends with anyone who stayed anymore. I came out to one of my oldest friends at Christmas, and they told me if I didn't leave my partner of 4 years and give up the gay lifestyle that I would burn in hell for eternity. This lecture was delivered in a crowded restaurant, with about a dozen people looking on.
At one point in college I wrote an editorial for my hometown paper and the minibio was something along the lines of "ABC High School Valedictorian, Class of 200X, and current MIT student"; as a result the comments were all incredibly nasty and irrelevant to the content of the article, along the lines of "Who does this liberal/atheist bitch think she is?" The only positive comments were from old people saying "Wow, I've never seen anybody under 30 submit a piece to the paper."
Truthfully, in person people are usually a lot more gentle (southern hospitality and all), but there's definitely an undercurrent of resentment after initial pleasantries. Sometimes it can be really awkward when I reciprocate their "It's so good to see you, and how are you doing?" and get a really depressing story back. (Got knocked up, laid off, foreclosed, etc.)
Even people in my own family can be hostile. It feels like I can never give anybody any advice, ever, because "they can't all live perfect lives" like me. It sucks.
I don't disagree that culture is a real problem (and not just in rural Southern towns), but since I also grew up in a rural Southern town I think the lack of interest in education, the general focus on getting enough money to pay the rent and buy a case or two of beer for the weekend, and wealth displayed through big trucks and jet skis is a much deeper problem then "I'm top in my class, but aw shucks I need to stay home and love me some Jesus so I can find me a nice boy and take care of Mamma"... that does happen, and sometimes its not for the best, but it's not nearly as common as "I got a job in the factory after high school and check out this kick ass Mustang I got".
I don't suppose you can comment on the state/locale this was in? I have some personal connections to more rural/"redneck" areas, and I try to understand what makes those areas what they are.
I deleted a previous comment because I didn't accurately convey my thoughts, but I'm hoping this is more accurate.
My hometown is one of the cheapest, yet most uneducated and violent cities in all of California. There was a huge class divide amongst my peers, none of whom were rich; Some could afford to move elsewhere, and others couldn't. Of those that couldn't, I would say approximately 20-30% are in prison, and the rest are stuck in <$10/hr jobs probably for the rest of their lives.
Of those who could move elsewhere (not rich, mind you, just well-to-do enough to move to a different city in CA, like say Sacramento or San Bernadino), most have decent middle class blue collar jobs (~$40k). About 10% of the group that was better off ended up going to college, and I would count myself amongst maybe 5 people (out of a class of ~400) that have truly jumped class barriers.
When you can only afford to live in one place, you are limited by the options of that one place. Even tiny increments in income/wealth open up exponentially greater opportunities, for the sole reason that they allow you to move elsewhere. For this reason, I concur 100% with Yglesias' theory: Housing regulation and laws, which have a disproportionate effect on housing affordability, are a huge impediment to class mobility.
Seattle, I hope you shape up before you turn into San Francisco. Thankfully, I can afford to live here, but my presence in Seattle is crowding out people that are exactly like me from 2-3 years ago. Accommodate them and build new housing, or you will cause their demise.
Unfortunately, the big reason why Seattle is getting so expensive is just because there are lucrative jobs to be had here. Same reason why Silicon Valley is so expensive, but still on a smaller scale at this point. I think we're going to see more and more of this: the cities with a lot of jobs getting very expensive to live in, and the cities with fewer job opportunities staying flat or even getting cheaper--because their economies are dying.
So, unless your income is very high, to avoid having your income canceled out by the local costs, you will either need to find a rare high-paying job in a low-jobs, low-cost city, or find rare low-cost housing in a high-jobs, high-cost city.
Not that this isn't already the case--just saying, I think America's "jobless recovery" is going to make this effect more extreme in the near future.
Seattle has a lot of high paying jobs, sure. But because Seattle artificially restricts housing supply, the high paying jobs bring in people like me that can absorb the cost, pushing out people that can't absorb the cost. Those people tend to work in jobs that keep other living costs low, meaning that if they continue to exist at all, they exist at higher prices...exacerbating the effect.
Seattle needs to stop focusing on raising pay. Their focus on wages for Airport workers and Fast Food workers completely misses the point: Those wages are already high from a US market standpoint...they are too low here because living costs are too high here. If you set a wage floor, the employers disappear. Alaska Airlines will move their hub to Portland or Vancouver, and all the Fast Food chains will cut their losses and close shop.
A focused effort on destroying barriers to new housing development effectively reduces the cost of living and increases living standards for everybody, without pricing out the lower-wage employment.
But because Seattle artificially restricts housing supply, the high paying jobs bring in people like me that can absorb the cost, pushing out people that can't absorb the cost
I do know that the pace of new housing construction in the Seattle metro area is very low, and last winter the housing supply on the market hit its lowest level since late 90s dot-com boom. Now I don't know if this is truly due to artificial/legal/zoning restrictions as you say, or if it's just due to the geography and the fact that the areas within reasonable commuting distance of Seattle are pretty well built out already--or some combination of both. But the fact is, people are moving here much faster than we are building housing for them, and it's pushing up prices very fast.
The interactive map is an amazing "infographic". What's interesting to me is the big band stretching from Duluth, MN to Midland, TX that's the most "upwardly mobile" for essentially all income classes.
An important note, though: While this data is useful for relative measurements, the absolute gain or loss in income % is less meaningful. For one thing, they're comparing ~30-yo's today to their parents in the "late '90s". Let's say I was 32 in 2012, and we compare my income with my parents' in 1998. In 1998, I would have been 18, which would mean my parents were likely at least 38, and had a few more prime years of earnings growth racked up.
Relatedly, my understanding is that there is a long-term trend towards later earnings years, tied to more professional and graduate education. Today's 30-yo just graduating from medical or business school might be primed to make great money later even if their parents were making more at age 30.
The areas on that map which demonstrate the highest gain in rising income between generations are almost exclusively in areas with either high natural gas reserves or high oil reserves.
The middle tier is mainly made up of areas where moving from a suburb to a major city does not involve getting on a plane to visit relatives. (Chicago being the exception, not sure why, maybe its proximity to Michigan?).
The lowest areas are primarily the deed south without access to oil/nat gas reserves. The deep south has a triple challenge of low income to reinvest in to school systems, limited opportunities or areas near Detroit which have seen a complete collapse of jobs.
This map is basically a heat map of areas which saw rapid changes to their underlying economies because of forces they could not control.
I'm not an economist but I do wonder if the reasons some of those places have higher mobility is because the previous generation in those areas have relatively low income jobs (i.e. mostly agriculture) and many of the current generation have a "gotta get out of here" mentality leading them to better paying opportunities elsewhere. I know I felt that way living in the mid-west in early high school.
I'd like to see a map of how many of these income reporters moved away from their locales and to where and also what professions they picked up.
The mobility those regions demonstrate is better than average for all income classes, and those income classes are defined nationally, not locally.
Of course, that "gotta get out of here" feeling isn't limited to lower income kids, so it could be a factor. Certainly it's typically good for your earnings if you're willing to move where you can make more money. But then why isn't upstate New York dark blue? (Sorry, upstate New York!)
I like your theory. I think the schools in those regions are generally pretty good, and due to agricultural consolidation and general urbanization, most kids in those areas see the writing on the wall.
I should have said public transportation in cities. In more rural areas, this would be less of an issue because of the otherwise low cost of living. There is less of an opportunity cost there.
What I found fascinating was when I zoomed in on my hometown area (Canton, OH area) the interactive "... With Parents in the X Percentile, ends up on average in the Y Percentile" flattens out as I raised the parent's percentile and then started to decrease. So on average children born into rich families decline by this metric (at least in this one area).
I think the article's headline point is true for me in one odd way. I grew up in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, and by chance the school district where I grew up had mandatory foreign language instruction (German) for all elementary school pupils in grades four, five, and six. (One member of the district staff was a German refugee who came over to the United States after World War II. She set up German classes delivered over the Twin Cities educational TV station, now a PBS affiliate station, and at the appointed hour, television sets in elementary classrooms all over the school district were tuned to her instructional programs. I think the school district also made an effort to hire new elementary teachers who had had some German during their higher education.)
My German is nicht so gut, but this early exposure to foreign language study (few Americans begin study of a second language before secondary school) got me started in the process of understanding what it takes to learn another language. Our school district had the usual mix of French, Spanish, or more German in junior high (I continued with German, a heritage language in my family) and added Russian in senior high, which I took. So when I went into university and tried out the Chinese major program, I was sufficiently successful to keep going in that major subject. Quite a few of my classmates from my school district studied interesting languages like Arabic and ancient Nahuatl and linguistics while in university, and several aspired to become, and at least one became, foreign service officers. So in this simple manner a difference in the local schools in my town propelled the mobility to new places of many of the alumni.
I went to school in S.E. Texas. We had French and Spanish in high school, nothing else. The French class was solid, but the Spanish class was lame, all we did was crossword puzzles and word exercises. I took it for two years and did not learn the language due to the poor instruction. I knew schools in the bigger nearby cities sometimes had German, but not my school. Also, the foreign languages were not mandatory classes. There was no incentive or push to learn a second language, most adults in my area thought it was useless and that students should be focusing on agriculture and not foreign languages. As such my high school had: Agriculture, Horticulture, Cosmetology, Auto-Shop, Animal Husbandry, landscaping.. but no focus on foreign languages or science beyond the basics.
It is all over the map, I know of at least one district in Texas that has an immersion program where 50% of your class time is in Spanish starting in kindergarten. I know of a (private) school where by 8th grade you have had 4 years Spanish and 4 years French. The public schools I went to had neither. The earliest you could take Spanish was sophomore year of high school, and at most you could take 2 years of it.
I've been to schools in about 4 different school districts in 3 different states (VA, PA, FL). None offered foreign language classes before high school.
Of course, this is also just anecdotal but I would certainly be surprised to hear that an elementary school or middle school were offering foreign language classes, especially if those classes are not tested for on the standardized exams that drive school ratings.
Same here. We could take Spanish or French in middle school and elementary school is just a haze at this point. When I graduated in the 90s, a foreign language credit was on the minimum high school requirements to graduate and two credits were required under my district's recommended plan. Most of us took two semesters of Spanish but a friend of mine took one Spanish and one German. Our school district wasn't even all that large or well-off (though it is now, thanks to suburban sprawl in north Texas) and we had Spanish, French, German, and (I kid you not) Latin.
i grew up in phoenix, az and didnt learn a second language until 7th grade, and that was a pretty basic class.. it didn't get very much beyond "the ball is red" until highschool
We had Spanish in elementary school in St. Louis, but (in my school anyway) it was more of an occasional special topic bonus class rather than a semester/year long study.
> My German is nicht so gut, but this early exposure to foreign language study (few Americans begin study of a second language before secondary school) got me started in the process of understanding what it takes to learn another language.
Or at least what it takes to learn another language according to the school system.
As someone born in the bottom fifth who worked up into the top fifth, a big part of it is actively escaping childhood culture and that culture's expectations. When I grew up, I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful - I met them when I was an adult. Good role models are critical for kids' sense of scope and possibility.
Then again, as a political liberal, I tend to say an un-liberal thing when talking about income distribution... income isn't distributed evenly, but neither is talent. Mediocre people don't advance society. They tend to stay where they started (which explains a lot of management mediocrity - some are born into positions of privilege, but lack the talent to do anything with it but maintain the status quo). The way to maximize success for society as a whole is to maximize the opportunity of its most talented members, by eliminating cultural and social barriers to success.
> Then again, as a political liberal, I tend to say an un-liberal thing when talking about income distribution... income isn't distributed evenly, but neither is talent. Mediocre people don't advance society. They tend to stay where they started (which explains a lot of management mediocrity - some are born into positions of privilege, but lack the talent to do anything with it but maintain the status quo). The way to maximize success for society as a whole is to maximize the opportunity of its most talented members, by eliminating cultural and social barriers to success.
I tend to take the another point of view on this: a society structured in a way that denies determination to individuals and communities because those people/communities are perceived to be untalented or unworthy is a society that perpetuates injustice and perpetuates and creates institutionalized class divisions.
> The way to maximize success for society as a whole is to maximize the opportunity of its most talented members, by eliminating cultural and social barriers to success.
Is this really true? If we ignore the problems of the average person or community do we really advance society? In a lot of ways western societies now turn a blind eye to class divisions, racism, sexism, etc. Can we say as a society this treatment really advances things? Is advancement for some really a society-wide advancement?
I think you misunderstand me. "class divisions, racism, sexism, etc" are impediments to talent. I firmly believe that talent and ambition are distributed evenly across humans, regardless of gender/race/class/etc, and I presume you do as well. "Advancement for some" as a function of talent is, in my opinion, society-wide advancement, because mediocre people aren't going to advance society, period. "Advancement for some" as a function of gender/race/class is an impediment to society, because the talents of those it excludes are squandered (or worse, turned to destructive paths).
To be sure, I'm being elitist here, and I don't deny that. But I think the empirical evidence is on my side. Show me a social revolution led by average minds, and I might rethink. More likely, I'll point out the brilliant minds that led the average.
> I think you misunderstand me. "class divisions, racism, sexism, etc" are impediments to talent.
Agreed.
> I firmly believe that talent and ambition are distributed evenly across humans, regardless of gender/race/class/etc, and I presume you do as well.
I think this might depend on how we are defining talent. Ultimately people have worth even if they don't meet any definition of talent just by virtue of being a human being.
> "Advancement for some" as a function of talent is, in my opinion, society-wide advancement, because mediocre people aren't going to advance society, period. "Advancement for some" as a function of gender/race/class is an impediment to society, because the talents of those it excludes are squandered (or worse, turned to destructive paths).
How exactly are we defining talent here? It seems like you would see some people as not having said talent and that those people wouldn't contribute to the advancement of society. However I would view such a definition of talent as an institutional barrier. There are a wide variety of people with different interest, skills, abilities, disabilities, and levels of function. That some of these people don't meet a definition of talent or, because of the way such a definition is crafted, cannot be talented is a really limiting factor for the success of society. Again, has society really advanced so long as there are classes in which people are viewed as less useful than other people? Promoting the value value, even if just implicitly, of some groups over others is a part of systemic, institutional barriers.
> To be sure, I'm being elitist here, and I don't deny that. But I think the empirical evidence is on my side. Show me a social revolution led by average minds, and I might rethink. More likely, I'll point out the brilliant minds that led the average.
I'm not really sure how this could be qualified. Social revolutions and changes aren't just the result of a few key individuals and there has been a tendency to ignore those people who have participated in such social change based on who they are or the kind of work they performed, or possibly the work they did not or could not do.
> As someone born in the bottom fifth who worked up into the top fifth, a big part of it is actively escaping childhood culture and that culture's expectations. When I grew up, I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful - I met them when I was an adult. Good role models are critical for kids' sense of scope and possibility.
I don't think I could have said it better. I too grew up relatively poor, in a hick area 30 minutes outside of the nearest white trash town, lumber yard, dying steel mill and trailer park.
I never even conceived that I would be able to obtain the life I have now, not even by half. Outside of my school teachers, I knew exactly one person with a college degree (my father) who spent most of his life dealing with family members who attacked him for having one ("so Mr. College, do you want to join us for a family dinner, or are you too good for it?" was a common thread). The available options to me were so limited, and going elsewhere involved so much more money than I had, it was inconceivable that I would have a life other than what I had seen.
I managed to pull myself up just enough to realize I didn't want to work low-paid hourly jobs and drive discount used cars for the rest of my life and enrolled in the local Community College to try and learn a trade.
As it so happens, my wife grew up in a newly wealthy family (her almost entirely uneducated father made a boat load during a housing boom in his native country), and simply "knew" how to operate in the upper-middle class. I met her while she was studying English at the same College as an international student (with the insane international student tuition paid for out of her own pocket). She simply had the cognitive tools to know how to make good money management decisions, how to buy things and haggle for good value, how to represent herself (even as a foreigner) so she'd end up paying the middle-class price for things instead of the poor person's price for things (one of the first lessons I learned, turns out it's cheaper to be richer):
An example:
I grew up where everyone around me bought used cars, some junk, some okay, all had expensive maintenance issues within the first year or two...but it's just what people did. The redneck with 20 cars in his yard? That's because he figures he can by 3 cars at $100 a piece and cannibalize (with hundreds of his own labor hours on top of any extra parts he needs to buy) them to make one good car he can drive for a couple months.
My wife was able to demonstrate that people like my parents, were spending on average, much more per mile over the life of their used car than we would if we bought a cheap new car with a reputation for high reliability. I still drive that same car 11 years later. My current cost per mile, even with high gas prices, is something like $.18 a mile. My parents spend something like $.50-.60 per mile.
And on and on and on. It was an entirely new way of looking at the world that simply never occurred to me or it appears anybody else around me.
Recently, one of my old friends from my hometown was up in a fit that a sweet lease he has on a basement apartment is going to be up in 2 years. This was a problem because he couldn't figure out how to afford the higher rental price that the market had gone to in the last 5 years and thought he might have to move out of state (another strange compunction I'll get to in a minute). I asked him, "wouldn't you be making more money via raises or a new job by then?". "I'm not qualified to get any of the jobs around here, the closest one I could find required at least an Associates Degree or a Certification."
So given a 2 year lead, it never occurred to him that he could simply solve his entire issue by getting some education or a couple of quick certificates out of the way. Worse, and I've found this as very common where I come from, pointing out these simple facts generates lots of very aggressive resistance.
The other strange obsession I've found is the "solution" some find in poor areas or "chasing expenses down". This means that, stuck in a job that's paid the same for the last 10 years, and costs rising, they can no longer afford to stay in their home areas. So the solution is to move to an area that has a lower cost of living -- of course without regard for the lack of jobs.
They try and and "chase" down expenses. This is of course opposite of moving to an expensive city, making much more money only to have it gobbled up by very high living expenses...except in an expensive city, the opportunity to keep moving up ahead of the rising expense curve actually exists. You can't chase down expenses forever, eventually you find yourself in an area with no jobs and miles and miles of endless 4th hand trailer homes and no opportunity to chase expenses down even further.
Being poor without access to what people with money actually do with their money (and how they come about that money) is very very hard for a young person to figure a way out of on their own. It's why poverty is systemic in many areas and the examples that are shown: boxers, basketball players, drug dealers, etc. are the ones kids gravitate towards because that's all they can see.
Makes me think of another useful piece of advice... marry well. I married into upper middle class as well, and my wife has different and useful values.
But yes, the short-term thinking and resentment of education among the poor is kind of amazing and appalling. My father, an extremely intelligent and charismatic man, called them "educated mow-rons" (you really need to capture that exaggerated accent). He worked for rich men, but had nothing but contempt for them. If he had applied himself productively, he could have been very successful and wealthy. Instead, his life was a total failure due to shortsighted and self-destructive behavior. If there's one thing I learned from watching him, it's the difference between working hard and working smart.
Now, I see my sister choosing to live in the redneck boondocks, constantly ground down by poverty and bad decisions. She's also very bright and could have been successful in another context, but she likes her country living. Unfortunately, she's surrounded by idiots. Everyone with that critical combination of talent and ambition simply leaves rural America and goes somewhere that they have a chance.
Recently, she tried to talk me into investing in a business idea she had - something that, done right, could turn into a comfortable living. But instead, she and her (even brighter) daughter polished up a bunch of wishful-thinking hyperoptimized numbers to convince themselves they could make six figures at what I think is a $30k business, devised a terrible plan to get there, and then got all butt-hurt whenever my other sister and me tried to make it realistic. And of course, she resents me for not tossing her $10k to squander. Such is the life of poverty - even otherwise intelligent people get into a cycle of terrible decisions.
I've had to make a personal rule to not get involved in anybody's life from where I grew up. It's simply too depressing watching them struggle with bad life-choice after bad life-choice, and only a few small changes would revolutionize their life and solve nearly all of their top issues.
The next biggest problem is that all of them want to talk about these bad life-choices with me, but don't want to hear the correct choice.
I'm not sure if the lack upward mobility in the South is a result of our economic landscape. It plausible that it's due to the lingering effects of segregation and the fact that the vast majority of our bottom 20% are African Americans while the majority of the top 20% are Caucasian. This map and a map of the distribution of the African American population in the South correspond so well it's a little disheartening.
I think you'd see the same distribution in the North, though. Reminds me of a joke about the difference between white Southerners and white Northerners... the southerners don't care if blacks are around, so long as they aren't uppity. Northerners don't care if they're uppity, as long as they're not around.
I'm pretty sure this rings true for the whole world and not just America. I moved from a coal mining town when I was young to washington DC and it increased our family wealth significantly and impacted my life in a very good way. If I had stayed in that coal mining town I would probably have done okay but the opportunities would have been much less.
Now I'm in NYC specifically for the opportunities. I'm here to make a great living and then one day skip town with my chest full of gold.
I can't help but feel that this is about a couple of things:
1. education
2. income
3. influence
I've travelled and lived all over the world. It always struck me odd that the poorer places in the world always seem to value religion over education (my perception), and it creates a nasty cycle where the majority of people don't/can't better themselves.
I saw this first hand in the southern US where it was always God #1, everything else (including education, which in my view is super important) #2. You would be amazed at the things people would give up if they thought "God" told them to.
I haven't studied the interaction of the three things above, so this is just my observations, but if you have a strong influencer at a young age, that influencer has a dramatic effect on the trajectory of your life. If that person pushes you to education, likely you'll be ok. Though it goes both ways. If the influencer pushes you away from education (for whatever reason), your life situation could end up very differently.
I was very lucky to have a non-religious teacher mother who pushed education above all else. I didn't know college "was optional". In my family, it wasn't. Not b/c I think college is necessary; I don't by any means. It was her thinking and pushing that molded me in a certain direction. Even though I grew up in the northeast US, I saw super religious families who pushed their kids away from education. Those kids are now in the their 30s and 40s and have lost most of their lives to "god".
As a bit of a counterpoint, I'm originally from rural Mississippi and was raised by very religious parents who would absolutely say that God should be #1. But this didn't translate into devaluing education. Instead they viewed it as their religious duty to give their children the very best education they could so that we could make a positive difference in the world.
"You would be amazed at the things people would give up if they thought "God" told them to."
I wouldn't be surprised at all. My parents made tremendous sacrifices to provide their children with a better life because they believed God wanted them to.
On the flip side, I have often seen people making poor decisions and attributing the decision to what they believed God wanted them to do. However, I don't think it is at all obvious that this is caused by their belief in God. It seems more likely to me that in the absence of belief in God, they would make similarly poor decisions but give different justifications.
Oddly, the researchers’ Summary of Project Findings (http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/website/IGE/Executive%2...) says that on average, the religious correlation is the opposite: “Finally, some of the strongest predictors of upward mobility are correlates of social
capital and family structure. For instance, high upward mobility areas tended to have higher fractions of
religious individuals and fewer children raised by single parents.”
I’m not sure how what data on religious people they are referring to. The Bible Belt is clearly deep red in the income mobility map.
As an extreme counter example I visited rural South Sudan, this is one of the poorest parts of the world, people are subsistence farming so their monetary income is very low. Some people struggle to pay school fees of 20 South Sudanese Pounds ($6.88) a term (3 terms a year).
Government funding is pretty limited so a lot of schools are supported by the church there, I think the funds are mainly provided by Christian organisations outside of the country.
My theory is that people with a better education are more keen on education. In South Sudan the people in church leadership are highly educated compared with the average person.
It isn't just God (in whatever form that takes). It can be family, it can be a job, it can be a farm. It doesn't have to be God.
I think the big take away is that education should be the number one priority. In my situation, my parents pushed either college/university or a trade school. The military wasn't an option (Father, dear, had a terrible time with Vietnam), and getting a job straight out of high school was out as well.
I genuinely believe that the attitude of --you'll go somewhere and study to do something, no matter what-- is what really counts in kids' lives.
Yes, it's much, much, much easier for the ones who have money and cultural capital; but it's the lessons of do anything with your life that seem to impact harder.
I don't understand why people in terrible positions stay where they are. I realize it takes at least some money to move, you need a way to get where you're going and you need money when you get there to eat and have a place to stay, but previous generations were much more mobile than we are now.
My grandparents constantly re-located to where the work was. They did construction so they'd move to where a big hurricane hit, since they'd be busy for a few years. People from the south flocked to the mid-west for factory jobs in the middle of the last century.
But this generation, and the previous generation, are content with just sitting on their asses. People are content to stay put after losing a job. Why move, they're getting an unemployment check? And it's not even people who own a home and don't wish to move.
It irks me when people say, "I can't find a job here." Change where here is! Beg, borrow, or steal a couple hundred bucks and hop a Greyhound out to the oil fields. Do something.
Could you show some evidence that previous generations were more mobile? I'm not disputing it, but I'm inclined to think we're not much more or less mobile than previous generations...
A note to anyone reading this who's living in the red zones, feeling discouraged.
It's going to be hard. You'll have to seize every opportunity and work as hard as you can with each one because you don't have the money to buy second chances. You'll have to work twice as hard to get a quarter of the distance. You'll have to say goodbye to those that stayed behind because almost everyone will stay. You're going to have survivor's guilt. Your religion will evolve so please don't sacrifice any opportunities over the beliefs you hold today.
If you stay strong, work hard and have a lot of luck you can make it out.
One thing that I think bears study and consideration is the attitudes towards moving. One of my chief remembrances from my collegiate/high school years is that some students would simply not want to move somewhere else to get a job: they wanted to be near family, even if that destroyed their chances at a decent job.
I hypothesize that willingness to leave location correlates strongly with income mobility.
I was born and grew up in WV. As many of you know, it is a poor state. We grew up on powdered milk. Most of my ancestors either went into chemical production (a local term from where I grew up is the "Chemical Valley", although most of that production and associated jobs are gone now) or slipped into the mines to work black gold [1].
We didn't have a lot, and there was no way that we could afford a computer. However, from a young age, I knew that I wanted to get into something called computer programming, as it was called in some books that I had checked out from the library. I was amazed that there was this "machine" that you could give instructions, which would cause it to display graphics and text on a TV, or play sounds from the TV's speaker. So, for as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in computers.
It seems like only yesterday that I was out cutting lawns in the summer or shoveling snow in the winter so that I could earn enough lumber to buy a Commodore 64 [2], which was a king's ransom for a young lad in the early 80s.
"You want to buy a... computer?", is what I remember my parents saying, in the most puzzling tone, when I indicated my intentions to them.
It was a reasonable response at the time, since most people where I lived didn't know what a computer was. Fortunately, I must have done a good job of explaining just exactly why someone would want to use a computer (much less own one), because my request was granted.
Like all of our travels, this was a family event; all of us loaded up in the car (a timeless 1974 AMC Gremlin [3] — those that remember the car will recall that the maximum setting on the air conditioning dial read, "Desert use only") and drove down to the bank, where I withdrew enough money to purchase the single-most expensive item that I would ever purchase as an adolescent.
I didn't have enough for the Datasette [4] (much less the 1541 [5]), so I would write programs and leave the computer on. I would stay up late, teaching myself to program by reading the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide [6].
Of course, my computer use quickly started showing up in the monthly power bill, and my dad started checking in with me every night, to make sure that I had turned the computer off. That was of course very difficult, because I had to manually write the programs down so that I could type them in again later. I eventually saved up enough for the Datasette, and finally even a 1541.
The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it happen; it's all up to you. On that topic, one of my favorite quotes is by Vince Lombardi [7]:
"A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done."
I am very lucky to have identified, early on, what I like and to have the good fortunate that it became something more in my life.
I agree that there is a mix of luck, desire, work and opportunity-seizing that must come into play, in order to assist in an individual's attempt at making a dream turn into reality.
I stand corrected... "obstacle1" and "jshen" are correct... I've made the mistake of extrapolating a single experience to all cases across the board.
And, as "mkr-hn" pointed out, we don't live in a vacuum... so many factors and people come into play in our lives.
> The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background.
So my dad grew up in a village (they didn't get electricity until the 1990's) in Bangladesh. He went to college and graduate school, eventually moved to the U.S., and ultimately my brother and I grew up solidly upper middle class. One thing he always told me is that he was never the hardest worker or the smartest person in his peer group, but was ultimately more successful than nearly everyone he thought was harder working and/or smarter. He said that what he had, in addition to being very smart and very hard working, was being very lucky.
"I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background"
No, it really isn't. Statistics show this very clearly, and this shouldn't require statistics for us to know it.
"Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious." http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-witho...
Yay, another HN post that seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives, and tries to attribute everything to luck and uncontrollable external factors.
The reality is, we all live in a cold, uncaring, unsympathetic world, and are subject to multiple random and unpredictable (and uncontrollable) forces. Pointing this out is no great insight, and this notion does little or nothing to change how one should approach the world. In the end you can only play the cards you are dealt, whatever they may be. But what you do with those cards is what matters.
People are born into disadvantageous situations all the time, and yet they manage to escape that environment and go on to have great success. Is is really all just "luck" or is it the case that your choices and actions affect your ability to even take advantage of what "good luck" happens to come your way?
"Luck = preparation + opportunity" might sound like just a silly slogan for Nike t-shirts or something, but there's a lot of merit to that. Maybe using pedantic definitions you can't literally "make your own luck" but in an effective sense, that's exactly what you do. You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along. You make your own luck by acting to change your circumstances.
And, yes, "black swan" events (of the "bad luck" variety) can come along and destroy you. It can happen to all of us, but that's just another tautology that isn't a very insightful observation.
"seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives"
Nice strawman. I certainly don't believe that.
"You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along."
This is true, but it is only half the story. Different environments have different amounts of opportunity. America has far more opportunity than Afghanistan, making your own luck will get you a lot farther in America and you can't "make" which country you were born into. Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
That's good to know. And I'm not saying that you specifically do believe that... it's more that your earlier post just seems to fit into a meme that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent around here, in which everything becomes attributable to "luck". Perhaps I over-reached in lumping your post into that category. Probably I'm just overly sensitive on this topic. :-)
Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
I mean, yeah, in a sense... but you can work backwards from any success and find ways to attribute that success to luck. I mean, we're all "lucky" that a huge asteroid didn't strike the Earth yesterday and cause a worldwide cataclysm that might have killed us all. But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful, exactly because those things are out of our control.
OTOH, unless one rejects the idea of "free will" (which is certainly a valid point of debate), then you can control your own choices and actions - and I tend to believe that it's more important to focus on those things which are subject to (at least a degree of) control by us as individuals.
" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful"
I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.
A great story, very proud of what you have accomplished and you should be too. I would just mention that your parents sound like they are incredibly supportive and were encouraging of your dreams. Not everyone has that.
> I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it happen; it's all up to you.
I want this to be true, I really do; however, the article you're commenting on is telling us exactly the opposite. You're very likely to be here posting this comment I would say because on average people on Hacker News are more driven than an average person. I really think the success stories are exceptions that prove the rule.
Born, raised and educated entirely in West Virginia. Currently a Director of Product Management at a DC tech company. My dad, who worked for the National Park Service for 35 years (retiring last month) brought home a 25Mhz "shades of grey" decommissioned laptop for me to play with in Jr. High. The rest is history. If I look back on that history, I definitely see myself being incredibly lucky, but also putting myself in the position to capitalize on every break that I got. At any rate, thanks for sharing. Montani Semper Liberi.
Amazingly, Toshiba still has a product page up for mine. The picture is misleading, it shows colors on the screen, but the specs list it as monochrome.
The C64 was my first computer too. I was 7 at the time, and 28 years later I'm still coding, only now I'm getting paid for it. Wonderful, wonderful machine, and I have the fondest memories of it.
(Actually ours was an SX-64, the ill-fated portable version, which did so poorly that my parents got one from a discount catalog for $50 in 1985, only a year after it debuted at $1000. Folks didn't know what they were missing! Years later we got a full-size C64, and when that broke down, a C128. As far as I know, the SX works fine to this day.)
>I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background
What you've personally found is that your life is what you make it, despite where you came from and your background. To generalize from you onto everyone else is, as I'm sure you know, faulty thinking.
Especially so when every statistic on social mobility flies in the face of the conclusion you've drawn from your anecdote.
almost the same story here, except I grew up in a trailer park in GA. I'd say that more than luck, it was me (you) seizing opportunities, and not getting dragged down in the local (in my case MJ happy) culture.
> In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life
I think you can replace "In America" by "On Earth" and that'll still be accurate. Just being born in America is a pretty big win compared to being born, say, in Rwanda.
Misleading headline. The study is more accurately paraphrased as 'where you grow up.' The authors found little difference between those who moved when they were young from a low mobility area to a high mobility area.
I would love to see a deeper investigation into how mixed-income neighborhoods positively impact mobility. It's a relevant point when discussing housing subsidies and future infrastructure projects. Many of the low mobility families in the NYT article have no car or only one car. In modern cities which depend almost exclusively on private-car transportation, this is a serious obstacle to higher wages.
I never believe in the odds. I was born in a farm town in Oklahoma where I spent 25 years. Then I moved to California, built a billion dollar company, earned a small fortune, and now I'm running a company in London.
This bottom-quintile to top-quintile measurement is annoying. A 'low mobility' area could be largely due to less upwardly-mobile poor or less downwardly-mobile affluent, and thanks to the researchers' weak choice of metric it's impossible to tell which.
Let's recall four standard reasons for a correlation of two variables:
(1) Coincidence. One rose over some time period, and the other also rose over the same period, despite being completely unrelated. (The world murder rate has been going down, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been going up. This is a negative correlation.)
(2) A causes B. (Cigarette smokers display lung cancer at elevated rates)
(3) B causes A. (Cigarette smokers display lung cancer at elevated rates)
(4) Root cause. Some other phenomenon causes both A and B. (Children in homes containing books display intelligence at elevated rates)
This should be obvious, but arguing against option (2) doesn't mean arguing for option (3).
Well, I can't actually produce a number for this, but how would you feel about a correlation between first digit of US zip code and incidence of Tay-Sachs disease?
Note: Tay-Sachs is something that happens to Jews, and Jews are concentrated in New York.
Does the zip code connection satisfy your demand of "in this context"?
My point is that "where you were born" is a broader term than "the zip code where you were born." Obviously your zip code doesn't cause anything. But your zip code determines things like what the schools are like in the area, what the income demographics are like in the area, etc. When people say "where you were born determines where you end up" they're referring to that larger definition of "where you were born" not literally your zip code. That's what makes many versions of (4) collapse into (3).
Though I think your Tay-Sachs example is one that arguably does not.
Another problem is that the culture does not value those things which empower young people to rise. Even among the top 5% of my high school class, I knew people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their church, or needed to stay home to help care and provide for members of their family. It's traditional and tribal, and looking off toward the horizon and going away for fancy schooling just doesn't rank highly on most peoples' priorities. In a community where many kids' parents attended the same high schools and the grandparents are local, wanting to leave is considered odd.
The only reason I'm not still there today is that for some reason, as a nerd and social outcast, I rejected that path from an early age and my top priority out of high school was to get the hell out. School was hell, but I consider myself fortunate not to be working minimum wage jobs and living in a trailer park like two of my siblings.