Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong

[kpete]

Even poor kids who do everything right don't do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. You can see that in the chart above from Richard Reeves and Isabel Sawhill, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's annual conference, which is underway.

Specifically, rich high school dropouts remain in the top about as much as poor college grads stay stuck in the bottom — 14 versus 16 percent, respectively. Not only that, but these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne'er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.



more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/18/poor-kids-who-do-everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything-wrong/

[abelenkpe]

1. K&R

[unblock]

2. i don't understand comparing the bottom of one column to the top of the other.

seems like just randomly comparing numbers.

hey, look at the other diagonal! 20% on the top left is bigger than the 16% on the bottom right! so, no meritocracy after all?

silly.


the direct comparisons across make sense, but most of these actually argue against a problem. 20% vs 14%, poor grads are more likely to end up in the top 20% than rich dropouts. same conclusion for the top 40% and top 60%. it's only that bottom 16% vs. 16% that a problem.

i'm not saying there's no problem, of course rich kids have some big undeserved advantages, but this chart doesn't seem like the best illustration of it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. me either

[Nye Bevan]

5. Agreed. Almost like the author of the article knew what he wanted his conclusion to be,

and twisted his analysis of the chart to get there.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. This is bizarre - the graph directly contradicts the title.

It should read "Poor kids who do everything right do do better than rich kids who do everything wrong".

It shows poor college grads doing better at all but the lowest centiles.

Its attempt to connect the top right and bottom left blocks is just surreal - it's like someone pointing out that the annual rainfall in Michigan is similar in volume to the total amount of wine grown in California each month, or something. What is relevant is the *size* of those blocks, not any comparison between them - in a society with good social mobility, or a completely rigid and stratified one, they might well still be the same size, but that size would be smaller or larger respectively.

The correct way to compare these charts is to look at matching boundaries on each side - that is to say, to look at the percentage of kids in each category earning above/below a given rate.

The bad news is that the fraction earning below the 20th centile is about the same. That's the fact that the horizontal red arrow is drawing attention to.

The good news is that at every *other* quintile, significantly more poor grads than rich dropouts are earning above it.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. That graphic is confusing as shit.

The graphic shows that poor college graduates are more likely to have above average incomes than rich high school dropouts.

Wealth inequality is easy to demonstrate, but that graphic fails.