This is just for my own purposes. I want to save this info somewhere so I don’t lose it. This has practically nothing to do with effective altruism, and should be viewed as my own personal blog post/ramblings.
I read the blog post What Trait Affects Income the Most?, written by Blair Fix, a few years ago, I really enjoyed seeing some data on it. At some point later I wanted to find it and I couldn’t find it, and today I stumbled upon it again. The very short and simplistic summary is that hierarchy (a fuzzy concept that I understand to be roughly “class,” including how wealthy your parents were, were you were born, and other factors) is the biggest influence on lifetime earnings[1]. This isn’t a huge surprise, but it is nice to see some references to research comparing class, education, occupation, race, and other factors.
Opportunity, equity, justice/fairness… these are topics that I probably think about too much for my own good.[2]
Of course, like most research, this isn’t rock solid, and lacking the breadth of knowledge I’m not able to make a sound critique of the research. I also want to be wary of confirmation bias, since this is basically a blog post telling me that what I want to be true it true, so there is another grain of salt I should keep in mind.
I would probably think about them less if I had been born into an upper-middle class family, or if I suddenly inherited $500,000. Just like a well-fed person doesn’t think about food, or a person with career stability isn’t anxious about their job. However, I think that if write about or talk about what leads to success in life then I will be perceived as angry/bitter/envious (especially since I don’t have any solutions or actions, other than a vague “fortunate people be more humble”), and that isn’t how I want people to perceive me. Thus, I generally try to avoid bringing up these topics.
This is just for my own purposes. I want to save this info somewhere so I don’t lose it. This has practically nothing to do with effective altruism, and should be viewed as my own personal blog post/ramblings.
I read the blog post What Trait Affects Income the Most?, written by Blair Fix, a few years ago, I really enjoyed seeing some data on it. At some point later I wanted to find it and I couldn’t find it, and today I stumbled upon it again. The very short and simplistic summary is that hierarchy (a fuzzy concept that I understand to be roughly “class,” including how wealthy your parents were, were you were born, and other factors) is the biggest influence on lifetime earnings[1]. This isn’t a huge surprise, but it is nice to see some references to research comparing class, education, occupation, race, and other factors.
Opportunity, equity, justice/fairness… these are topics that I probably think about too much for my own good.[2]
Of course, like most research, this isn’t rock solid, and lacking the breadth of knowledge I’m not able to make a sound critique of the research. I also want to be wary of confirmation bias, since this is basically a blog post telling me that what I want to be true it true, so there is another grain of salt I should keep in mind.
I would probably think about them less if I had been born into an upper-middle class family, or if I suddenly inherited $500,000. Just like a well-fed person doesn’t think about food, or a person with career stability isn’t anxious about their job. However, I think that if write about or talk about what leads to success in life then I will be perceived as angry/bitter/envious (especially since I don’t have any solutions or actions, other than a vague “fortunate people be more humble”), and that isn’t how I want people to perceive me. Thus, I generally try to avoid bringing up these topics.