Not really, no. In the US, it's mostly about your family, although there are exceptions of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the

Not really, no. In the US, it's mostly about your family, although there are exceptions of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... > The correlation between parents' income and their children's income in the United States is estimated between .4 and .6. > If a parent's income had no effect on a child's opportunity for future upward mobility, approximately 20% of poor children who started in the bottom quintile (in the bottom 20% of the US range of incomes) would remain there as poor adults. At the other end of income spectrum, if children were born into wealthy families in the top 20%, only 20% would stay in that top income category if their mobility opportunities were equal to every other child's in the country. > But long-term income statistics show this isn't happening. Mobility opportunities are different for poor and wealthy children in the US. Parental incomes and parental choices of home locations while raising children appear to be major factors in that difference. According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study 43% of children born into the bottom quintile (bottom 20%) remain in that bottom quintile as adults. Similarly, 40% of children raised in the top quintile (top 20%) will remain there as adults. Looking at larger moves, only 4% of those raised in the bottom quintile moved up to the top quintile as adults. Around twice as many (8%) of children born into the top quintile fell to the bottom. 37% of children born into the top quintile will fall below the middle. These findings have led researchers to conclude that "opportunity structures create and determine future generations' chances for success. Hence, our lot in life is at least partially determined by where we grow up, and this is partially determined by where our parents grew up, and so on."