The 'Glass Floor' Is Keeping America's Richest Idiots At The Top

America has a social mobility problem. Children born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. For children born in 1984, the odds were 50-50. 

Most accounts of this trend focus on the breakdown of upward mobility: It’s getting harder for the poor to become rich. But equally important is the decline of downward mobility: The rich, regardless of their intelligence, are becoming more likely to stay that way. 

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According to research carried out by Reeves and others, the likelihood of the rich passing their status down to their children — “stickiness,” in economist-speak — has surpassed the likelihood of poor children remaining poor. 

“If we were becoming less of a class-bound society, stickiness at the top should have gone down,” Reeves said. “But the evidence shows that it’s gone up.”

This phenomenon — Reeves calls it “the glass floor” — has taken on a new political urgency. Over the last two years, Donald Trump has put his family members in charge of child care policy and Middle East peace. Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian board membership has highlighted how corporations and foreign governments seek to influence elected officials through their children. 

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“The sense that there’s a self-sustaining and self-dealing group at the top isn’t wrong,“Reeves said. “When you create a ‘meritocratic’ selection process where the production of merit is increasingly skewed by parental income, you end up with a hereditary meritocracy.” 

The rich, in other words, are not sending their best. And the more institutions they control, the more of their kids will be running the country. 

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Over the last 20 years, selective universities have become just as dominated by the wealthy as the elite colleges — while receiving a fraction of the attention. Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina and the University of Southern California, for example, admit higher percentages of legacy students than Princeton. Thirty-eight colleges — including upper-crust mainstays Colgate and Tufts — admit more students from the top 1% than from the bottom 60%. At Washington University in St. Louis, the worst offender, the ratio is three-to-one. 

“These aren’t just elite institutions, they’re elitist institutions,” Reeves said. “They end up serving the children of today’s elite rather than preparing tomorrow’s elite.”

Public colleges are subject to the same trend. In 2017, University of Georgia students had a median family income of $129,800. Two-thirds of the students at the University of Michigan came from the richest fifth of the income distribution; just one in 30 came from the poorest fifth. 

“This is what inherited wealth looks like for the top 20%,” Reeves said. “You don’t save your money and give it to your kids as a bequest. You spend it on your kids so they don’t need the bequest. It’s an upfront investment.”

But as universities tilt their admissions toward the wealthy, Reeves said, they aren’t just leaving talented low-income students behind. They’re also lifting mediocre rich students up. A 2005 study found that wealthy middle-schoolers with the lowest standardized test scores were more likely to graduate from college than poor middle-schoolers with the highest scores. Students with average SAT results are nearly six times more likely to be admitted to top-tier universities if their parents are alumni. One of Reeves’ studies found that 43% of the members of upper-class households had skills and intelligence that predicted lower incomes.

“Having a college degree is most beneficial to the kids who aren’t that smart,” Reeves said. Intelligent kids will have thousands of opportunities to demonstrate their skills. Less-talented kids, on the other hand, have to rely on credentials that make them seem intelligent — high SAT scores, top-tier diplomas and corporate internships. 

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In 2016, researchers sent hundreds of résumés to high-end law firms. They were identical in degrees and grade-point averages, but researchers tweaked the extracurricular activities to make some candidates seem rich (sailing, classical music) and others seem poor (track and field, country music). At the end of the study, upper-class men had been invited to 12 times more interviews than lower-class men.  

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And then there’s the nepotism. According to a 2011 study, 70% of boys born into the top 1% of income earners ended up working at their father’s company at some point in their lives, a larger percentage than other income brackets. In 2006, researchers found that nearly one-third of new CEOs were hired through a family connection. 

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In 2016, researchers sent hundreds of résumés to high-end law firms. They were identical in degrees and grade-point averages, but researchers tweaked the extracurricular activities to make some candidates seem rich (sailing, classical music) and others seem poor (track and field, country music). At the end of the study, upper-class men had been invited to 12 times more interviews than lower-class men.

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palmab03 said:

That's crazy. I would expect it to be like 1.5:1 or maybe 2:1. Not 12:1.

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DeaconSig said:

I mean, I’m not hiring somebody who listens to country music.

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DeaconSig said:

I mean, I’m not hiring somebody who listens to country music.

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Deacon923 said:

back when i was in recruiting for my old law firm, we received a resume in which extracurriculars and interests included "costuming". not sure where that falls on the rich/poor spectrum but it certainly fell on the weird side of the weird/normal spectrum.

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PhDeac said:

Sounds like cosplay, maybe theater. That's not all that weird for young people nowadays.

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PhDeac said:

The glass floor snowflakes seem to be upset based on the tags.

ph on race: benefit&bitch
ph: mr affirmative action
u earned ur "job"? lol

These privileged idiots would be kissing my ass if I got to Wake by playing football but they think I didn't belong because I got there through my own hard work instead of daddy's donations. Pathetic.

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mako1331 said:

You people are listening to the wrong country music.

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PhDeac said:

People don't want to work with rap battle champions?

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