Editor's letter: The myth of social mobility

last updated 8 January 2015

The most enduring of American myths may be our social mobility. Bootstrapping our talented selves to wealth and fame, we believe, is more likely to happen here in the land of opportunity than anywhere on earth. And “moving on up” may be the great American story; it’s tangled in the plotlines of much of our native literature, from Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby to Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life. If the rags-to-riches romance has a patron saint, however, it’s Horatio Alger, the 19th-century author of dime novels starring impoverished boys who rise up from squalor to achieve wealth and fame. Strive and Succeed was just one of his books, but it describes all of them—and many of us.

Now comes the cruel news that success may be determined more by your long-dead ancestors than long hours at work. (See Health & Science.) Using family names to track wealth and poverty over 200 years, economic historian Gregory Clark found that for those who come from a middle-class background, the chance of entering the ranks of the elite is the same in the U.S. as it is in South America or Sweden—and it’s not all that good. “If we want to rank you overall in society, maybe as much as 60 percent of the outcome is determined at the time of conception,” Clark says. But if your family name isn’t a branch on an illustrious family tree, there’s another reason to despair. Social scientists this week reported that they’ve found that “popular high school students earn more than their less-liked counterparts—even decades after graduation.” (See Business: The news at a glance.) If that isn’t the second cruelest thing I’ve heard this week, I don’t know what is.