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Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#81

Post by aantix »

"opportunity hoarding"

>That includes everything from legacy college admissions to unpaid internships that

>let affluent parents rig the game a little more in their children's favor.

Why does the author imply something sinister with economic division? I want my kid to succeed, so I fight for his chance to succeed. I have high end skills to offer, first in line to learn from me? My children.

This isn't deliberate exclusion of everyone unprivileged, it's hyper-inclusion of only the ones I love the most.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#82

Post by wutbrodo »

guilt wrote: post #62

I don't think some people realize the value of a hard day's night. I think it is completely fine to pretend they didn't exist. And finally - I don't respect the rich and the meaningless kind that have been plaguing corporate America for years.

> I don't think some people realize the value of a hard day's night.

What do you mean by a hard day's night? AFAIK this expression was invented by the Beatles for their eponymous song and means something like "a rough day". But that doesn't really make sense in the context of your comment so I'm wondering if there's some usage that I (and a quick googling) am unaware of.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#83

Post by jimmies »

Dropping out of high school isn't "doing everything wrong" and finishing college is pretty far from "doing everything right" so this seems to be a little bit of editorial journalism.

From the paper: "Children who go on to achieve a college degree, irrespective of their parents’ income, are more likely to make it to the top income quintile [...] Bottom-income children without a diploma have a 54% probability of remaining on the bottom rung as adults."

So really what it says is that you have a much better shot in life being educated regardless of who you are. But if you don't like to stay in school, you'd better be rich, because there are some chances you will end up being rich anyway. If you are poor and don't stay in school, you are very likely just live your life miserably.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#84

Post by dogma1138 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #77
dogma1138 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be on it, being poor in America still means you have more money than everyone in the world, including more than the middle class in most EU nations. Social mobility in Europe is also really not great especially once you adjust for the immigration, you also need to account for the fact that social mobility studies in Europe are based on the income level of parents and grandparents, both WW2/Eastern Block an…

Stop reading libertarian / right wing / whatever propaganda, open your eyes to the real world. I've lived on both sides of the Atlantic. Being poor in America is a lot worse than being poor in Europe. Dress up your statistics all you like, the fact is America is a trap for anyone below middle class. That's not saying there are rivers of milk and honey flowing in the EU either. But over there, at least you still have…

I wonder if you ever actually bothered to go through any of the actual poor regions in Europe and tell me how well they are having it. I live in the UK, I'm not a libertarian, I'm not a right winger, and I don't read propaganda.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#85

Post by budadre75 »

These stats are interpreted wrong. Assuming poor college kids started out from 1st quintile(60%), while only 19% for poor HS dropouts. And there are more poor college kids in 5th quintile(>80%) than poor HS dropouts, 20% to 16%. This is from conclusion of the paper: "Nonetheless, we find it encouraging that a set of well-evaluated programs appear, according to the model, to make it possible to close most of the gap in the lifetime incomes between children born into lower and higher income families"

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#86

Post by ethanbond »

vixen99 wrote: post #70
ethanbond wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obtaining wealth is mostly timing/luck. There are plenty of hard working, well disciplined, intelligent poor people. There are plenty of lazy, stupid rich people. There's virtually no correlation between any of the things you named and wealth. The question then becomes how much should a lucky person be "rewarded," or how much should an unlucky person be "punished." A lot of people feel that being unlucky shouldn't me…

Where's your source for all these assertions?

Well using IQ as a proxy for intelligence, you can find many sources that say there's no significant correlation between IQ and wealth (https://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/intlwlth.htm).

Many studies find that your parents' wealth is the single greatest influencer of your wealth (http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/intergen.pdf).

I would say that who your parents are is about as "lucky" a thing could be, considering it's totally independent of who you are or decisions you make.

My only other assertions being that smart poor people and dumb rich people exist? I hope that's self-evident to anyone on this board...

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#88

Post by wutbrodo »

justinv wrote: post #51
sixtypoundhound wrote: post #45

Stupid paywall. Can we just ban these sites?

Why? Journalists deserve to get paid for their work.

I don't think he was suggesting that paywalled articles should never be read, but rather that they're ill-suited to content aggregators like HN, where you're likely to visit 10 domains for every 10 links you click. Particularly because the vast majority of paywalls are subscription-based, not pay-per-content, paywalls and content aggregators aren't very compatible.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#89

Post by blfr »

michael_h wrote: post #78
blfr wrote: post #49

But, of course, it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child's formative early years. That's why, as Stanford professor Sean Reardon explains, "rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class…

> Affluent parents pass high IQ and conscientiousness I'll have to go with 'citation needed'.

Sure. Both are highly heritable:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182557/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#90

Post by blfr »

abrahamepton wrote: post #71
blfr wrote: post #49

But, of course, it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child's formative early years. That's why, as Stanford professor Sean Reardon explains, "rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class…

This is one of the most HN comments ever. Without getting into the nature-vs-nurture debate for the trillionth time, "Actually, mostly a matter of genes because this is by far the biggest influence parents have on their kids" is a totally preposterous statement. Genes are certainly AN influence, but I think my parents' encouraging my nerdiness, buying me a graphing calculator in high school and surrounding me with co…

It should be a very HN comment since I learned most of it here from 'gwern (not Ayn Rand): https://www.gwern.net/iq
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