Riche et célèbre quelle probabilité pour le devenir (paragraphe 1)

Compared with people in other rich countries, Americans tend to accept relatively high levels of income inequality because they believe they may move up over time. The evidence is that America does offer opportunity; but not nearly as much as its citizens believe.

Parental income is a better predictor of a child’s future in America than in much of Europe, implying that social mobility is less powerful.

In particular, earning a degree and marrying before having children can help someone climb to a higher rung. However, family background influences the likelihood of education and marriage.

In France the influence of family background on students’ achievement in secondary education appears to be much stronger than that of parental background on individual’s probability to achieve tertiary education.

Policies that facilitate access to education of individuals from disadvantaged family backgrounds promote intergenerational wage mobility, and are also likely to be good for economic growth. Examples include inter alia school practices that start grouping or “tracking” students only late in their educational curricula so as to encourage the social mix within schools, or government-supported loan or grant systems that reduce students’

dependence on their families for financing their post-secondary studies.

The height of each bar measures the extent to which sons’ earnings levels reflect those of their fathers. The estimates are the best point estimate of the intergenerational earnings elasticity resulting from an extensive meta-analysis carried out by Corak (2006) and supplemented with additional countries from d’Addio (2007). The choice of empirical estimates in this meta-analysis is motivated by the fact that they are based on studies that are similar in their estimation technique, sample and variable definitions. The higher the value, the greater is the persistence of earnings across generations, thus the lower is the intergenerational earnings mobility.

Sources: The Economist, Wikipedia, US Census, “A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries”: OECD