I was disappointed by what I thought were bonehead conclusions in a recent article about the effectiveness of education in changing life outcomes. I thought the data cited in the article provided clear evidence that more education is associated with a better future, and this applied to both rich and poor.
In my analysis, I described another chart that appeared in a source paper mentioned in the article. The chart shows outcomes for sons who were born to fathers who were in the poorest 10% of the United States and Canada.
What was missing in the Washington Post article was the "before" chart of the before-and-after comparison. I have simulated the "before" picture for the fathers-and-sons chart as well.
Naturally, all the sons of fathers in the bottom decile are themselves in the bottom decile at the start. The question is, what does the "after" chart look like? How many of the sons remain in the bottom 10% as adults? How many make it up to the 2nd decile, and beyond? Maximum credit for those who venture to provide estimates for all ten deciles for at least one country.
EDIT: the solution
I have a thought: how unlikely is it, a priori, for a bottom-tenth-son to be in the bottom decile in the "after" simply based on the intertia of new immigrants (to the US) replacing the bottom decile every generation?
In other words, would they not have to actively go "backwards" in order to remain where they are and not be at least somewhat supplanted (in the bottom decile) by new immigrants? I haven't thought that out very far, but I will use it as the basis for my guess.
Bottom: 5% 2nd: 15% 3rd: 20% 4th: 20% 5th: 10% 6th: 10% 7th: 10% 8th: 5% 9th: 5% 10th: trivial
In other words, I'm guessing (with considerably less than 5 minutes of thought sadly) that it's reasonably easy to get somewhere above the bottom decile, but quite difficult to get past about the 7th. I'm probably comically wrong.
posted 3396 days ago