“SUGAR DADDY” OR “MOMMA”

The last posting of this blog addressed the myth that successful people are totally responsible for their success.  Successful people are advantaged by a variety of factors; some are “hidden” advantages and this luck goes unnoticed or unrecognized by them or other people.  But some factors are more visible and have recognized effects.

          Two factors come readily to mind, although some will even refuse to accept their viability in advancing or hindering success.  They are class and race.  This posting looks at the first of these factors, class.  The first question to be addressed is:  does parental income affect or correlate with their children’s ability to garner reasonable income levels?  By reasonable, one can see it as an income level associated with a middle-class lifestyle.

          The Pew Charitable Trust and the Russell Sage Foundation funded research in this area at Stanford University.  Their overall finding, as a result of this research, can be summarized as follows: 

… approximately half of parental income advantages in the United States are passed on to children, which is among the lowest estimates of economic mobility yet produced.  The research also finds that the degree to which income advantages are transferred from parents to children differs across the income spectrum, and that parental income differences benefit children from higher-income families more than those from lower-income families.  The results indicate that opportunity for economic success are far from equally distributed.[1]

One statistic that this study reports demonstrates this lack of opportunity; i.e., children from the 90^th percentile of the population (the top 10%) can expect to make as adults, with their own families, incomes three times greater than the children from the 10^th percentile (the bottom 10%).

          How would one know that this advantage did not exist as an element of this nation’s economy?  Well, if the next generation’s income distribution shows no relationship with the previous generation’s distribution, then one could not attribute parental income as a determining factor.  If this lack of correlation existed, the poor would emanate from families across the income spectrum, the same for those who make mid-range incomes, and the same for those who make high incomes.  

This study calls this measure intergenerational elasticity (IGE).  IGE is expressed as a number from zero (no generational advantage/disadvantage) to one (total generational advantage/disadvantage).  Therefore, any number above zero (and below 1) indicates some level of parental income effecting their children’s eventual income level.

As the result cited above indicates, half parental income advantage is passed to their children and is indicated by the IGE scores of .52 for males and .47 for females.  And these number varies according to the income levels of parents.  The IGE scores shoot up to the lower .60s for parents in the 50^th to 90^th income percentiles.

There seems to be in this study’s findings a gender difference.  Men benefit or are disadvantaged more – i.e., they have higher IGE scores – than women.  When comparing their own incomes, men have 40% higher IGE scores than women.  What also affects women from higher income parents and their IGE scores is their likelihood of marrying men of high-income status; a factor that does not affect men nearly as much.

As often mentioned in this blog, the federalist value, regulated equality, calls for proactive governmental policies to meet these obvious inequalities that, given the above findings, indicate systemic causes.  In that light, this blog favors what the president of the Russell Sage Foundation said in reaction to this study:

The report documents that public policies must do more to level the playing field so that children from low-income families have greater opportunities to compete in the 21^st century economy.  Over recent decades, the rising income and wealth of affluent parents have allowed them to increase investments in their children, from day care through college.  At the same time, wages have stagnated for most workers and low-income families have struggled to pay for routine expenses …[2]

And as for a civics’ national program, it should make sure that students appreciate what consequences result from casting a blind eye to this source of inequality.  If history is any indication, one result is those nations so characterized have experienced extreme politics – segments of the population taking on extreme rightest or leftist beliefs and accompany motivations to act in radical ways.  Sounds familiar?

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[1] “Parental Income Has Outsized Influence on Children’s Economic Future,” Pew, July 23, 2015, accessed October 31, 2018, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-and-statements/2015/07/23/parental-income-has-outsized-influence-on-childrens-economic-future .

[2] Ibid.

THAT’D BE ME

A personal note:  to start this posting, this writer wants to share a conversation he had with a relative.  He, the relative, voiced the opinion that he was responsible for the success he has achieved.  It wasn’t government, it wasn’t community, it wasn’t even family (maybe except for his wife).  He was responsible. 

He was expressing an extreme version of an argument that a person who is well-ensconced in the natural rights persuasion loves to espouse.  That view focuses on the virtues and potentials of the individual – that is a powerful message, an appealing message to many.

          This blog has argued that the natural rights view has become prominent in the American political culture.  While this relative might be expressing the more extreme take on this bias, generally, Americans today have a serious inability to see the error contained in this line of argument. 

This writer, trying not to start a serious disagreement with the relative, did point out that his business interests depended on government services concerning traffic, security, the financial system, on and on.  He responded that that’s why he pays taxes – too much of them – and so, these benefits are well paid for; they are a transaction. 

Yes, he loves his country, but that does not necessarily include the government and, given the general tenor of his comments, that institution is seen as holding an anti-American character.  He expressed these opinions with conviction and confidence – there was little to no doubt in what he was saying.

The writer, Malcolm Gladwell,[1] has something to report regarding this view:

…I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work.  People don’t rise from nothing.  We do owe something to parentage and patronage.  The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves.  But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.  It makes a difference where and when we grew up.  The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine.  It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words.  It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.[2]

          Gladwell begins his support for this conclusion by pointing out a usually overlooked correlation.  That is, those who succeed in sports that are played during certain parts of the year – e.g., hockey or baseball – are apt to be born during certain stretches of dates.  In terms of hockey those are the months from January to April. 

Why?  Because, it seems, they are older than their cohorts as they grow up and learn to play the sport.  That gives them an advantage relative to the others; their mental and physical development is marginally better but in a competitive environment, that can mean a lot. 

They demonstrate, early on, higher skill levels; they are then on starting teams, get better coaching, and develop more productive emotional dispositions toward the sport, toward practice, toward the discipline greatness demands.  In other words, in this seemingly innocuous twist of fate, certain athletes have a consequential advantage and they had nothing to do with its occurrence.  Does it guarantee success?  Of course not.  Hard work is essential, but it is not all there is.

A person who has studied this phenomenon, Paula Barnsley, proposes that this type of skewed age advantage works if three conditions are also present:  early selection of the advantaged, separation of those deemed talented from the untalented, and the “talented” are afforded superior training or other experiences to enhance the talent.  If the three coincide with or are caused by the age advantage – people who are born just before the cutoff dates of the various sports – these lucky ones have meaningful advantages.

Now apply this advantage in sports to education; does it transfer to a scholastic endeavor?  Yes, it does.  And as with sports, the advantage is not just a matter of the first year or the first few years of schooling, but it extends for many years.  And education, as the gateway to many other opportunities, helps determine many of the successes one experiences through life.  This initial advantage shows itself in testing and advancements toward higher education accomplishments – from acceptance to higher education programs to further academic successes.

No, birthdates do not totally determine who succeeds.  Differences in correlation studies varies from ten to twenty percentage points.  But, one cannot deny an effect exists and, one should remember, is a totally random variable; no one schedules his/her birthdate.  In addition, this birthdate factor is only offered as an example of how a non-determined, accidental condition can affect how successful people are successful.  The famous sociologist, Robert Merton, gives this type of advantage a name, the “Matthew Effect.”  The Matthew refers to the Gospel of Matthew.

“For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.  But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”  This excerpt from that gospel sounds un-Christian, but it does ring true given the finding Gladwell is reporting.  The point is: 

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.  It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks.  It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention.  And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice.  Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”[3]

So, what does all this mean for educators, for civics teachers?

          The first step to address this obvious, anti-federated reality is for people to become aware of these unwarranted advantages that undermine fulfilling the federalist value, regulated equality.  How does these conditions relate to regulations?  Institutions – government, schools, youth organizations, and the like – can regulate differently how they treat age or other determining factors.  This needs definite and serious study.  This posting does not have the answers or is it proposing a set of regulations.  It just wants to add its voice to this topic.

          As for the relative, he has worked hard; he did not receive a good education; he immigrated to the US from a Central American country in his teens and was the product of a broken home.  He does deserve credit, along with his wife, for achieving a comfortable retirement, three successful children with their own families, and an extended number of years on this earth – he is in his eighties. 

But he did not do it alone.  For one thing, he was able to live his life in post-World War II America with all the advantages the sole industrial power during many of those years could provide.  The relative had nothing to do with that, but had the advantages flowing from an unparalleled economy.

This blog has previously pointed out this unequal distribution of advantages.  It has cited the work of the late John Rawls, the philosopher and social commentator.  In part, this is what this blog has reported:

[Rawls] two main relevant ideas regarding equality are (1) the notion that justice is the product of a people/group establishing the basic rules of their arrangement when no one knows beforehand what his/her status will be once the arrangement is formulated and (2) that once one analyzes the reasons for anyone’s success, one can only attribute limited attribution to a person’s effort for said success.  Both of these factors lead one to limit any compensation one [should] … receive relative to market determinations.  Last, Rawls argues for assistance for those not so privileged under the consideration that life can and does visit misfortune on potentially anyone – “there but for the grace of God go I.”[4]

Rawls’ ideas have influenced the development of the federalist moral code this blog has proposed.[5]

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[1] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, (New York, NY:  Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

[2] Ibid., 19 (emphasis in the original).

[3] Ibid., 30.

[4] See Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit, Rawls:  A Theory of Justice and Its Critics, (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1990).

[5] See posting, “Changing Times,” March 13, 2015.