> 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.