Unequal Chances

Family Background and Economic Success

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne Groves, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne Groves

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780691136202
  9780691119304
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400835492
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.


New estimates show that intergenerational inequality in the United States is far greater than was previously thought. Moreover, while the inheritance of wealth and the better schooling typically enjoyed by the children of the well-to-do contribute to this process, these two standard explanations fail to explain the extent of intergenerational status transmission. The genetic inheritance of IQ is even less important. Instead, parent-offspring similarities in personality and behavior may play an important role. Race contributes to the process, and the intergenerational mobility patterns of African Americans and European Americans differ substantially.


Following the editors' introduction are chapters by Greg Duncan, Ariel Kalil, Susan E. Mayer, Robin Tepper, and Monique R. Payne; Bhashkar Mazumder; David J. Harding, Christopher Jencks, Leonard M. Lopoo, and Susan E. Mayer; Anders Björklund, Markus Jäntti, and Gary Solon; Tom Hertz; John C. Loehlin; Melissa Osborne Groves; Marcus W. Feldman, Shuzhuo Li, Nan Li, Shripad Tuljapurkar, and Xiaoyi Jin; and Adam Swift.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: The Apple Does Not Fall Far from the Tree
• CHAPTER TWO: The Apple Falls Even Closer to the Tree than We Thought: New and Revised Estimates of the Intergenerational Inheritance of Earnings
• CHAPTER THREE: The Changing Effect of Family Background on the Incomes of American Adults
• CHAPTER FOUR: Influences of Nature and Nurture on Earnings Variation: A Report on a Study of Various Sibling Types in Sweden
• CHAPTER FIVE: Rags, Riches, and Race: The Intergenerational Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States
• CHAPTER SIX: Resemblance in Personality and Attitudes between Parents and Their Children: Genetic and Environmental Contributions
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Personality and the Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Son Preference, Marriage, and Intergenerational Transfer in Rural China
• CHAPTER NINE: Justice, Luck, and the Family: The Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Advantage from a Normative Perspective
• References
• Index