Having grown up in a 2-parent household with both fulltime employed in high paying jobs (I'm 53 so you can do the regression yourself!), my co-hort of classmates growing up diverged based on how they utilized their opportunity.
One of the stories I love to tell my wife is how some of the very same people who grew up with designer everything and handouts from the Bank of Mom & Dad™️never learned the value of working or money. Today some are comfortable and others struggling because the decisions they made were predicated on an outcome others earned. (We all have stories about a rich kid who blew every chance, I grew up in a school with too many of them.)
Programs like "Fresh Air Kids" gave inner-city youths the opportunity to see life outside the "concrete jungle" and every study has shown the influence of classmates of differing income levels seeing "home life" for the others and the positive impact it can have.
Seeing the possible outcomes, both positive and negative, are high motivators when properly constructed. Constrast Bias is dangerous when parents, teachers or role-models say "Why can't you be like Mike?" (Charles Barkely's commercial about not being a role-model is a wider argument for individual acheivement then he probably considered at the time.)
*In the current state of Geo-politics, picking up a copy of "Prisoners of Geography" may help answer some of the foundational issues we face today based on choices made centuries ago.
I stand here today on my soap box to explain wht this topic is part of what keeps me up at night.
I am a big fan of John Rawls whose A theory of justice postulates the concept of the veil of ignorance. If you could start agaian and spawn in a random point of socuety to start over as a child would you do it. Mostcof us would likely say no. I had it rough but even i know it could have been worse.
This is how Rawls explains we must design just societies. A society in which everyone would be willing to take that bet. This has always reminded me of todays letter. The thing is this isn't new our research has just gotten better and we can better describe the direct impact.
Im not an idealist. We cannot have a perfect society but i believe that we can have one where luck is not the determining factor for whether you will have a good life or not. Great news letter as always!
@Antowan Batts, John Rawls's theory was also what came to my mind when I read today's post. My husband, who is a geographer, told me about it. I also thought of the so-called idea of the "ovarian lottery" popularized by Warren Buffett. I think it is pretty similar to the "citizenship premium" discussed in the post as well. Coming from a 2-parent household with parents who supported all my educational endeavors, even though not that much financially, but with other human capital, I believe I definitely won the lottery. Is it a jackpot given that I was born in Ukraine, probably not, if compared to Western countries; yet, it could have been much worse.
Yeah exactly. Every variable counts. I was both lucky and not. My father died when I was 4 but my mother is the strongest leader I've seen and why we made it through. I was lucky enough to have her.
Sorry about your father, but I'm glad that you had such a great mother.
I am actually an idealist to some extent and l want to believe that education still can serve the biggest equalizer if more people are given the opportunity to learn.
I like to say im a rational idealist. I know the things I hope for are hard stretches but they are physically feasible. The question is can humanity do the hard work?
While Chetty’s sibling fixed-effects design reduces shared family confounding, it does not address child-specific genetic heterogeneity or broader regional gene–environment correlations created by selective migration. If genetically influenced traits affect both parental migration timing and children’s long-run earnings, then quasi-random exposure to neighborhoods may still reflect underlying gene–environment correlation rather than purely environmental causation. Without genetic data, the design cannot fully disentangle environmental effects from dynamic sorting processes intensified by assortative mating and increasing geographic stratification.
Did you ever get a chance to read Moretti's New Geography of Jobs? It was absolutely fascinating when it came out and was a precursor to a lot of the big things Chetty was doing.
Reminded me of this study on what if we bring the neighborhood to you! https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5691692/hope-vi-public-housing-opportunity-insights-raj-chetty - where the federal government used HOPE VI to demolish the nation's most distressed public housing projects and transform them into new, mixed-income housing complexes, essentially integrating low-income families into neighborhoods with more affluent families. They find, in short, that these neighborhoods went from having poverty quicksand to having giant beanstalks that helped disadvantaged kids climb to greater prosperity. And they find a remarkable reason why this happened: low-income kids became much more likely to interact with and befriend higher-income kids.
It's fascinating and instructive to look at the country or an area by changing the race in the upper right. https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ My casual overview suggests that the overall pattern across the country of "where is better" stays similar but the overall levels are not the same by race. No one is surprised at the latter.
Not sure why this research matters given that we are not communists. People and monkeys and fish are born with different abilities and in different environments. There is no Nazi God who can equalize these things nor should there be. If you want to cure cancer ,for example , you want people born to hit the ground running. Neither you nor the forces of evolution can't give everybody the same opportunity to be a brilliant scientist who will cure cancer. Trying to do so would be deadly to the species.
And even more deadly would be telling certain groups that they are under privileged , will never perform well, and their best hope is a revolution from which to get free stuff from Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani.
I read it differently. I read it as there are people who might be able to cure cancer but Live in the wrong zip code. If we cared supporting those with potential to cure cancer then we need to make sure their effort can payoff.
Well , the kids who go to Harvard got there on their own without anybody equalizing the opportunity so it's very doubtful that you're gonna take someone who didn't get there on his own ,give him an artificial push along a variable or two and expect him to be equal to someone who was bred over generations to be superior . And how fair is that anyway? You could just as easily argue that kids who were born to go to Harvard should be given enrichment along the way that even their parents cant provide or afford . That is the kid who is likely to cure cancer not the other kid who comes from an under performing country ,family ,neighborhood ,gene pool.
We say success is merit based but evidence indicate that some students who made it to Harvard, to use your example, is not due to effort or ability but due to parents access to resources. The argument here is we should be focusing on merit.
What you are saying is that you want to violently impose your definition of merit on Harvard when it has already demonstrated in the real world that it knows best.
But , It is a free country so the better non violent alternative would be to start your own university using your particular definition of merit and see how well you do.
Well that seems like a very poor argument given that Harvard is the world's best at deciding what merit is. If they are wrong Harvard will no longer be Harvard. What they do is identify merit better than anyone else in the world.
I am using your example. To complete it, Harvard received 47,000 applicants last year. They admitted 2,003. Is it possible that one person that was qualified was overlooked? If your answer is yes, then you can see how Harvard can still be the best school but yet not admit all the best students.
The answer is obviously yes and Harvard would certainly agree. Does that mean you want to violently impose your will on Harvard so they will admit those who you deem to have merit?
Having grown up in a 2-parent household with both fulltime employed in high paying jobs (I'm 53 so you can do the regression yourself!), my co-hort of classmates growing up diverged based on how they utilized their opportunity.
One of the stories I love to tell my wife is how some of the very same people who grew up with designer everything and handouts from the Bank of Mom & Dad™️never learned the value of working or money. Today some are comfortable and others struggling because the decisions they made were predicated on an outcome others earned. (We all have stories about a rich kid who blew every chance, I grew up in a school with too many of them.)
Programs like "Fresh Air Kids" gave inner-city youths the opportunity to see life outside the "concrete jungle" and every study has shown the influence of classmates of differing income levels seeing "home life" for the others and the positive impact it can have.
Seeing the possible outcomes, both positive and negative, are high motivators when properly constructed. Constrast Bias is dangerous when parents, teachers or role-models say "Why can't you be like Mike?" (Charles Barkely's commercial about not being a role-model is a wider argument for individual acheivement then he probably considered at the time.)
*In the current state of Geo-politics, picking up a copy of "Prisoners of Geography" may help answer some of the foundational issues we face today based on choices made centuries ago.
I have not read the book “prisoners of geography “ adding it to my list.
I remember the Charles Barkley stance on not being a role model
I stand here today on my soap box to explain wht this topic is part of what keeps me up at night.
I am a big fan of John Rawls whose A theory of justice postulates the concept of the veil of ignorance. If you could start agaian and spawn in a random point of socuety to start over as a child would you do it. Mostcof us would likely say no. I had it rough but even i know it could have been worse.
This is how Rawls explains we must design just societies. A society in which everyone would be willing to take that bet. This has always reminded me of todays letter. The thing is this isn't new our research has just gotten better and we can better describe the direct impact.
Im not an idealist. We cannot have a perfect society but i believe that we can have one where luck is not the determining factor for whether you will have a good life or not. Great news letter as always!
@Antowan Batts, John Rawls's theory was also what came to my mind when I read today's post. My husband, who is a geographer, told me about it. I also thought of the so-called idea of the "ovarian lottery" popularized by Warren Buffett. I think it is pretty similar to the "citizenship premium" discussed in the post as well. Coming from a 2-parent household with parents who supported all my educational endeavors, even though not that much financially, but with other human capital, I believe I definitely won the lottery. Is it a jackpot given that I was born in Ukraine, probably not, if compared to Western countries; yet, it could have been much worse.
Yeah exactly. Every variable counts. I was both lucky and not. My father died when I was 4 but my mother is the strongest leader I've seen and why we made it through. I was lucky enough to have her.
Sorry about your father, but I'm glad that you had such a great mother.
I am actually an idealist to some extent and l want to believe that education still can serve the biggest equalizer if more people are given the opportunity to learn.
I like to say im a rational idealist. I know the things I hope for are hard stretches but they are physically feasible. The question is can humanity do the hard work?
While Chetty’s sibling fixed-effects design reduces shared family confounding, it does not address child-specific genetic heterogeneity or broader regional gene–environment correlations created by selective migration. If genetically influenced traits affect both parental migration timing and children’s long-run earnings, then quasi-random exposure to neighborhoods may still reflect underlying gene–environment correlation rather than purely environmental causation. Without genetic data, the design cannot fully disentangle environmental effects from dynamic sorting processes intensified by assortative mating and increasing geographic stratification.
Good point. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Did you ever get a chance to read Moretti's New Geography of Jobs? It was absolutely fascinating when it came out and was a precursor to a lot of the big things Chetty was doing.
Still on my books to read. My reading has suffered lately.
Reminded me of this study on what if we bring the neighborhood to you! https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5691692/hope-vi-public-housing-opportunity-insights-raj-chetty - where the federal government used HOPE VI to demolish the nation's most distressed public housing projects and transform them into new, mixed-income housing complexes, essentially integrating low-income families into neighborhoods with more affluent families. They find, in short, that these neighborhoods went from having poverty quicksand to having giant beanstalks that helped disadvantaged kids climb to greater prosperity. And they find a remarkable reason why this happened: low-income kids became much more likely to interact with and befriend higher-income kids.
It's fascinating and instructive to look at the country or an area by changing the race in the upper right. https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ My casual overview suggests that the overall pattern across the country of "where is better" stays similar but the overall levels are not the same by race. No one is surprised at the latter.
I can spend all day looking through this data. So fascinating
Not sure why this research matters given that we are not communists. People and monkeys and fish are born with different abilities and in different environments. There is no Nazi God who can equalize these things nor should there be. If you want to cure cancer ,for example , you want people born to hit the ground running. Neither you nor the forces of evolution can't give everybody the same opportunity to be a brilliant scientist who will cure cancer. Trying to do so would be deadly to the species.
And even more deadly would be telling certain groups that they are under privileged , will never perform well, and their best hope is a revolution from which to get free stuff from Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani.
I read it differently. I read it as there are people who might be able to cure cancer but Live in the wrong zip code. If we cared supporting those with potential to cure cancer then we need to make sure their effort can payoff.
Well , the kids who go to Harvard got there on their own without anybody equalizing the opportunity so it's very doubtful that you're gonna take someone who didn't get there on his own ,give him an artificial push along a variable or two and expect him to be equal to someone who was bred over generations to be superior . And how fair is that anyway? You could just as easily argue that kids who were born to go to Harvard should be given enrichment along the way that even their parents cant provide or afford . That is the kid who is likely to cure cancer not the other kid who comes from an under performing country ,family ,neighborhood ,gene pool.
We say success is merit based but evidence indicate that some students who made it to Harvard, to use your example, is not due to effort or ability but due to parents access to resources. The argument here is we should be focusing on merit.
What you are saying is that you want to violently impose your definition of merit on Harvard when it has already demonstrated in the real world that it knows best.
But , It is a free country so the better non violent alternative would be to start your own university using your particular definition of merit and see how well you do.
Well that seems like a very poor argument given that Harvard is the world's best at deciding what merit is. If they are wrong Harvard will no longer be Harvard. What they do is identify merit better than anyone else in the world.
I am using your example. To complete it, Harvard received 47,000 applicants last year. They admitted 2,003. Is it possible that one person that was qualified was overlooked? If your answer is yes, then you can see how Harvard can still be the best school but yet not admit all the best students.
The answer is obviously yes and Harvard would certainly agree. Does that mean you want to violently impose your will on Harvard so they will admit those who you deem to have merit?