18 ms·

Where you are born is more predictive of your future than any other factor

375 points by betocmn 7y ago

bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I seem to remember some story of a dinner party with Gates where he was bragging his intelligence would have allowed him to rise to the top in whatever culture he was born into. Can't find a link to the anecdote however so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
- makotoNagano 7y ago
  Even so, people are allowed to grow and change their ideas.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    I expect so, I just found it amusing. I picture him looking back on his callow middle age with a bemused expression. on edit: finished, got cut off early by interviewer.
- strikelaserclaw 7y ago
  guy seems to have matured a lot in his later years.
- neogodless 7y ago
  Can we focus on what the article says rather than on a distraction that focuses on an alleged anecdote about the author from decades ago that does nothing to confirm or refute the research and presentation of this article?
- madiathomas 7y ago
  Maybe he isn't talking about becoming a dollar billionaire at an early age at any community. Maybe he is talking top in the context of that community. If he was born in a remote village of a third world country, maybe he was going to rise to the top and have more cattle than anyone else, but globally, he was going to be a successful but an unknown herdman. Edit: Removed confusing Latin terms.
  - MagnumOpus 7y ago
    > persona non grata That phrase does not mean what you think it means. You're looking for the words "person of no consequence".
    - madiathomas 7y ago
      Sorry. I thought it can also be used for an "insignificant person". I will avoid Latin terms next time.
  - jaynetics 7y ago
    persona non grata = unpleasant person. You probably meant "unknown person"? (I don't think there's a canonical Latin phrase for that.)
    - madiathomas 7y ago
      Yes. That's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.
RickJWagner 7y ago
What does this say of the army of homeless in California? Are they just 'doing it wrong'?
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  They were born to the wrong parents. http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ is a great read about the specific advantages that a trivial percentage of Americans enjoy
- anextomp 7y ago
  That, on average, they would be worse off if they were born elsewhere. It's a predictor - nobody was suggesting that it's the only factor, or that it's deterministic.
- rco8786 7y ago
  We don’t know where they were born. But more importantly these studies just prove out that the zip code you are born in is highly correlated to the socio-economic status of your parents. Which is the real predictor for future status.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tunap 7y ago
  Edit: NM, removed off-topic content
- kranner 7y ago
  The first line of the article qualifies the title by adding [being born] "to white, well-off parents who lived in thriving communities and were able to send us to excellent schools."
wcunning 7y ago
The bigger question in my mind is how much geography matters inside one country. For comparison's sake, I think the point of the article works even better to compare a woman in America to a woman in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, it's a bit apples and oranges -- the kingdom explicitly disallows women to do many things without a man, whereas if there are effects like that in America still, they're definitely much more subtle than being enacted in law. So how does the apples to apples comparison work out? Does geography play nearly as large a role in a country? Does it play as large a role in a smaller, more homogenous country (Sweden, say) than in America?
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  The answer is a lot, in the US. That’s because the real predictor is not the piece of land you were born on, but who your parents are, and what kind of resources they (and therefore you) have access to. Here’s a nice website showing data for the US: https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ https://www.opportunityatlas.org/
  - non-entity 7y ago
    That was and interesting site, albeit depressing. What I found interesting was the better outlook for those born in the rural midwest compared to almost all of the south.
- bluetomcat 7y ago
  Once you stop comparing developed and underdeveloped countries, social class has the major weight. It determines the environment of your upbringing, your social circles and so on. Geography in a big, relatively developed country also plays a role as some areas are more densely populated, with better access to good education and healthcare, for example.
- hos234 7y ago
  Hugely matters even from one block to the next - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/raj-chetty-and-study-hyperlocal-inequality/592612/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/raj-chett... As for the American women Vs Saudi women question check out Tara Westover's book Educated (which Gates has also recommended). We are all usually and blissfully unaware of things we don't see even if they are happening right next door.
username90 7y ago
Not sure why they put Melinda's gender as a handicap, it allowed her to get things handed to her on a platter by Bill. She is now loved and famous thanks to spending Bill's money on charity without taking any of the downsides and hate related to starting a company and fiercely clawing yourself to the top like Bill did. I agree that being a woman is a handicap in many situations, but saying that Melinda had to make more sacrifices to get where she is than Bill is laughable.
- daliusd 7y ago
  Citation needed. Have we read the same thing?
- imInGoodCompany 7y ago
  I can't find any references in the report to Melinda as an example of gender inequality, and it seems extremly atypical of the Gates' to say that. Which part are you referring to, exactly?
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    Well, the title of the article is "HOW GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER STACK THE DECK FOR (OR AGAINST) YOU". Yet they don't provide any examples or evidence that your gender works for or against you _except_ in the cases of poor countries. It seems a little underhanded to imply that women are disadvantaged in western countries - if anything, it's the other way around.
  - henryaj 7y ago
    It's in the graph at the top, under the title "Starting Out Ahead" - see the large bump under 'gender' in Melinda's life plot
  - trevyn 7y ago
    It’s in the “journey” graphic, where Melinda has to scale a “gender” hump: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/assets/2019-report/starting-out-ahead.png https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/assets/2019-repo...
luckylion 7y ago
"Men enroll in college, women don't" "in every single country". And yet in lots of Western countries, more women enroll in college than men. I find it weird when articles that claim science make claims that are easily challenged by widely available and commonly known data.
- goto11 7y ago
  These quotes does not seem to occur in the article?
  - Izkata 7y ago
    The sentiment is there though - the one place college is mentioned, it's specifically contrasting men and women across all countries.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Gender inequality cuts across every single country on Earth. > Boys’ worlds expand [...] and enroll in high school or college or get a job. > girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands. Emphasis mine.
    - renjimen 7y ago
      If you measure gender inequality by more than just higher education enrollment, then yes, woman are disadvantaged across every single country on Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality
ronnier 7y ago
I’m extremely lucky, I was raised in projects at an early age in an absolutely horrible area and went through middle school and high school there (mother eventually moved out of the projects but in the same city). Random beatings were common once you neared your teen years, I was physically attacked many times just because I was white I guess (judging by the racial words said towards me). But yeah, most people do not do well in life there, they are stuck in a cycle of violence, drugs, and other destructive behavior that they never recover from. It makes absolutely no sense how I was able to make it out and end up doing very well in life. I want to help others break free from the cycle of self destruction but it’s very hard unless you are with them daily. Anyways, to this day I’m thankful for John Carmack for giving me that spark of interest in computers.
- apexalpha 7y ago
  Glad to hear you've done well for yourself and found a way out in IT. Question though: what do you mean with 'raised in projects'? I can't really Google it. Or is this a reference to the song I find?
  - keiferski 7y ago
    > Subsidized apartment buildings, often referred to as housing projects, have a complicated and often notorious history in the United States. In everyday American English, "the projects" often refers to a very dangerous urban residential area, or at the very least, a non-desirable one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_Unit...
    - apexalpha 7y ago
      Ah thank you. Is it synonymous with a Ghetto?
      - keiferski 7y ago
        They are almost equivalent in everyday use, but in actual meaning, they are different. "The projects" strictly refers to the building developments themselves, but is often used informally to refer to a poor neighborhood in general. "The Ghetto" refers to a neighborhood of an urban area and not a particular building or group of buildings. "The projects" are often in the ghetto but not necessarily. Saying "I grew up in the ghetto" and "I grew up in the projects" are more-or-less equivalent. Both only refer to urban areas; there is no such thing as a rural ghetto.
NoblePublius 7y ago
You mean it’s not a coincidence that I was born in Palo Alto and I am now a millionaire CEO?
- NoblePublius 7y ago
  For all you downvoters, this was a factual and sincere question. :-)
thrower123 7y ago
Ah, magic dirt. It's all to do with the patch of land you hail from, and most definitely doesn't have anything to do with who your parents are, their IQ, or their genetic legacy...
- imInGoodCompany 7y ago
  The report is saying that where you are born is the most predictive factor in determining how well you will do later in life, compared to other metrics. By the way, how well do your theories on IQ and "genetic legacy" (nice dog-whistle) perform in combination with the actual data that shows pretty much every country in the world improving under almost every metric? Take Bangladesh now vs. 50 years ago for instance. Did the nation's "genetic legacy" magically improve over that time period? Though I guess it must be easier to just attribute your situation to genetic superiority, rather than to theories supported by actual data.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    I really don't care to wade into the unproductive morass of population-level IQ. However, if you tell me that somebody's parents average an 85 IQ or have family histories of dyslexia, short-term memory deficits, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, that's more predictive of how well they are going to do in life than what zip code they happen to reside in.
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you are intentionally choosing the least charitable interpretation of this. No one believes in "magic dirt". When we see such a strong correlation, it leads us to ask questions as a society and sometimes, those point to some uncomfortable truths. Your parents being in a poorer part of town is often because they do not have the means to live in the richer parts with better schools, more socioeconomically accomplished neighbors. Genetic legacy could be a factor but I implore you to do a bit more research on the history of IQ tests as they are today and understand that it is often hard for a measure developed by a benchmarking a non-representstive sample of society is very unlikely to represent the whole. (Check out Radiolab's recent series on Intelligence for example). I'm not sure the kind of life you've experienced but there are several people smarter than you and more capable in many ways who will never get the chance because they never had the access.
bluedino 7y ago
The kids you grew up with or were friends in school with highly impact this as well. Friends with the weird kid that just ate his boogers all day? You guys are probably working at McDonalds together. Hang around the stoners that never got their acts together? You might have ended up the same way. But if you hung out with the kid who went to college? You might have decided to go to the same college and maybe got an internship as his dad's company. Maybe his name was Steve, and you guys took a shared love for electronics and started your own company. So think about this when you decide to buy a house, if you have kids. Your kids neighbors might be the biggest influence on the rest of their lives. Imagine if you had grown up one town over, or on the other side of the tracks, but didn't because your mom liked the kitchen layout in the house you grew up in.
- ljf 7y ago
  I know exactly what you mean- but is it easy for a kid to make a change? I fell in with certain groups and left others as we either shared an affinity for things or had very different values. There were some groups or friends where I put up with differences as I really wanted to be part of the group, but there were many that just weren't open to me due to my interests and sensibilities. How much I could have changed those things which were already a construct of my upbringing, background, social conditioning etc. I do not know. I guess what I am saying it, why did person X end up being friends with the booger eater and not the chess team? I'll be interested to see how much I can shape the direction and range of my kids friends - but I doubt they'll listen ;)
  - shantly 7y ago
    To the extent that one can affect it, I think it has more to do with selecting the entire friend pool, not picking individual friends (which obviously won't work). The friend pool at Phillips Exeter's got a higher top-end of friend quality and a higher bottom-end, generally speaking, than your average public school—the best and worst likely cases for your kids' friend groups are both "better", probably—to pick an exaggerated example. We do the same thing when we choose where to live for the public schools. It's largely about finding better likely friend group outcomes. "Better" kids are easier to teach and their families are more likely to push them academically, so a proxy for that is how "good" the school is (test scores, college readiness, reputation) but it's kinda sorta mostly about the kids with whom your kids will be hanging out 7-8 hours a day.
betocmn 7y ago
Relevant [0]: "The life chances approach suggests that status is not entirely achieved, but is, to some extent, ascribed. Overall, in societies emphasizing ascription, opportunity is relatively low and status (in the sense of prestige in the community) is often inherited. This means that people are, effectively, given their status as a result of the group into which they are born, rather than earning it entirely on merit. Ascriptive qualities such as race/ethnicity, gender, and class of origin can all affect one's life chances. In all societies parents pass on whatever advantages and disadvantages they have to their children". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances edit: typo
Tade0 7y ago
I see race* to be a very prominent factor in these charts. On one hand I would like to agree, but on the other I would like to respectfully remind my western friends of the existence of eastern Europe(especially Moldova) and the Balkans, where let's just say that white privilege is not that apparent. *dirty word for me personally. There's one race - the human race.
- empath75 7y ago
  Bigotry and colonialism takes many forms. Most people in the us wouldn’t make a distinction between anybody from Central America once they crossed the border — they’re all ‘hispanics’, but they have all kinds of problems with ethnic discrimination in places like Guatemala, using racial distinctions that most Americans wouldn’t even recognize.
  - dqpb 7y ago
    In other words, race as a category is bullshit.
    - csallen 7y ago
      Whether you believe that or not, there exist many millions who don't, and who treat others differently primarily on the basis of race.
      - dqpb 7y ago
        The problem is that people are treating others differently based on a false categorization.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Hence the need to fight racism and racial discrimination, and to assist those who are excluded by it.
    - empath75 7y ago
      It’s bullshit but if people categorize others based on those meaningless distinctions and act on it, that’s still a problem.
Merrill 7y ago
Americans think progress can fix inequality because we live in a thinly populated country with lots of resources. In particular, since 1800, mostly European immigrants converted the economy from hunting/gathering and neolithic agriculture to modern agriculture. Most parts of the world for most of history have lived at the Malthusian limit with diets ranging from lavish to starvation within the society.
aetherspawn 7y ago
I don’t like how this article spins that doing housework is like a degenerate or bad thing for a woman to do. More housework = more inequality. Uh, ok. It has to be done. That’s how teamwork, works.
- yetihehe 7y ago
  Maybe it should be viewed as "doing ALL of the housework by woman"? If woman is burdened with taking care of everything, this is imbalance.
  - kolinko 7y ago
    Well, it depends if the man is burdened with earning all the money, doesn’t it? While it’s not my preferred arrangement, some families have one partner worry solely about money, and another solely about the housework.
    - nostrebored 7y ago
      I think you mean one partner with the ability to leave the relationship
      - michannne 7y ago
        You don't suddenly become trapped in a relationship when you stop earning money yourself.
        nostrebored 7y ago
        Your barriers to leaving become much higher when you're staying at home, haven't worked in years, and have a family. Thinking otherwise is dense. I personally know people who are in relationships with horrendous people because they have no exit strategies. This is a common thing people talk about in stay at home circles.
        deleted 7y ago
keiferski 7y ago
Does anyone else have a problem with an American billionaire deciding which worldview should be exported to the world? I'm sure the Gates have only the best intentions, but that doesn't mean that their particular brand of philanthropy is inherently the best solution to the diverse needs of the world's extremely disparate population.
- daliusd 7y ago
  First, you are oversimplifying everything. Secondly, you absolutely have weight in that - so go on and offer better solution. Maybe your perspective is correct one, but so far you have not offered anything.
- buddylw 7y ago
  We can have a discussion about weather we should have billionaires in the first place, but Gates is employing his vast resources in an attempt to improve the world with a humble data-driven approach to reduce suffering in the world. For that, I'm quite thankful.
  - verbify 7y ago
    Precisely - nobody bats an eyelid when billionaires spend their money on yachts, if they spend their money on philanthropy, it should be applauded.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Bill Gates is busy with a decade long PR effort to whitewash his reputation - successfully. That he does some good along the way is 'collateral upside'.
    - buddylw 7y ago
      I do not pretend to know his motives. All I can see are his actions.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
wuliwong 7y ago
The title of this article is "EXAMINING INEQUALITY HOW GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER STACK THE DECK FOR (OR AGAINST) YOU" The title of this HN post is the header of one section of this article. It should be changed to the article's title.
CommieDetector 7y ago
Where you are born is an function of you parents IQ...
Based_Detroiter 7y ago
Im surprised there is not a single reference to IQ as a predictive factor in life success. More recent studies have shown upwards of 80% IQ heritability. With the average IQ in Africa hovering around 70, your certainly better off being born to parents from Japan than Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Bostonian 7y ago
  The linked article starts with "We were born in a wealthy country to white, well-off parents who lived in thriving communities and were able to send us to excellent schools. These factors, among many others, put us in a great position to be successful." It would be more intellectually honest if Bill Gates had mentioned his very high IQ as a factor in his success. This article estimates an average IQ of 82 rather than below 70 for sub-Saharan Africans. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000634 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Intelligence Volume 38, Issue 1, January–February 2010, Pages 1-20 A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans M.Wicherts, Conor V.Dolan, Han L.J. van der Maas A response by Lynn and Meisenberg in the same journal, defending the below-70 estimate, is at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609001275 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... .
- bonerman69 7y ago
  IQ IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- hevi_jos 7y ago
  He has. He talks about it at the start. If your body and brain in development does not receive enough nutrients, it does not fully develop. As a volunteer teacher I have seen African kids disconnect after just 2 hours of class because the food they ate was weak in nutrients. This usually happens with iodine. If the pregnant mother has not enough of it, the baby will develop with smaller IQ. The same happened in Africa in sport for a long time. It could not compete with the USA, even when most of them actually were genetically from Africa. In the US, they could develop fully.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
Who give birth to you more in many places. Not where.
baalimago 7y ago
>A big part of the solution is policies that help women and girls carve out new paths for themselves. Well even if they can do this, it doesn't seem to help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
jamisteven 7y ago
I find it hilariously patronizing how they explain things in this article, did they seriously need to mine all this data and do all this research to come to these so obvious conclusions? Poverty, Lack of healthcare and education, clean water, the sins of generations and the cycle that proceeds it, its the basis of every ghetto in the world. Really dont understand what The Gates Foundation is trying to get across with this piece. He has the power, the means, the influence to single handedly change the situation in Chad with zero help from anybody, all they have to do is choose to do it. Yet here we are with all this data and metrics, was this seriously an "ah-ha!" moment for them?! If so, they seriously are detached as the 1%.
- AwesomeFaic 7y ago
  Maybe going overboard with research and quantitative statements was an effort to make it accessible while combating the notion that they might just be the 1% and blaming poverty etc for others' challenges. Not debating their ability to address these problems directly.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Did they seriously need to mine all this data? Yes, they did. "Everybody knows" is sometimes wrong. If you want to actually fix problems, you'd better know what the problems actually are, rather than just know what "everybody knows".
bluetomcat 7y ago
As cynical as it may sound, we are unequal once we are conceived in our mother's womb. An educated, healthy, grown-up mother has anticipated that moment with great sentimentality and does her best to ensure the best for the baby during the whole course of the pregnancy. Neglected, underweight, malnourished children from less responsible mothers are easy to spot even during their infant period. This is your real start which determines much of your mental and physical health for your while life. Healthy, mentally-stable parents are most likely to have healthy and mentally-stable kids which is the number one prerequisite for enjoying and succeeding in life.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I hope you did not mean to imply that all infants that are underweight, neglected and malnourished are so because of their moms bad choices. Some people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still have children.
  - bluetomcat 7y ago
    > Some people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still have children. Sure, but let's not try to pretend that those kids will have an equal start.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Of course it won't be equal. But that does not make any statement about their moms.
- renjimen 7y ago
  > Healthy, mentally-stable parents Do you think that people in Chad are inherently less healthy or mentally stable, or might it be a product of their environment?
  - bluetomcat 7y ago
    They are born less healthy because their parents are less healthy due to the harsh environment and due to their parents (the kid's grandparents), and if you extrapolate that for many past generations, you get a nation/race/ethnicity with worse genes which is inherently less healthy.
neogodless 7y ago
Here we have a data-driven article outlining problems in equality of opportunity for humans across the globe, some encouraging success stories and progress, and ambitions to work on fixing scenarios where there's less success, or the change isn't fast enough. The motivation of such an article seems clear and obvious - those with the resources, ability, and of course their own altruistic motivations will have to work on finding and implementing solutions to the problem, that is, by reducing and removing the barriers that exist, especially due to geography and gender. What's much less clear to me are comments about this article that aim to diminish it, or one-off examples to supposedly refute it. Maybe you disagree with the article, and if so, provide data-driven sources to provide us with an alternate perspective that we can evaluate and discuss. Perhaps you have read about some of the solutions that help accelerate the move towards equality, and you wish to share them here. Perhaps you have other suggestions for making the world a better place in our collective future.
- tootie 7y ago
  It feels like the pretty common reaction of downplaying a bad situation in such a way as to absolve the privileged people of any responsibility. None of this is the fault of anyone alive today. It's a combination of history, geography and bad luck. But we can at least acknowledge it's all true.
baalimago 7y ago
And the more children the U-countries give birth to, the luckier my children will be. Isn't that funny? It's like humanity is intentionally making the odds worse for their own children, and noone is intervening.
sgt101 7y ago
Isn't this a case of driving using the rear view mirror? If we had done this analysis in 1965 I would bet fair that the biggest challenges would have been for people born in southern china; governance (your government would kill you at any moment), nutrition (mass starvation), education (not much of that), disease (plague, cholera, smallpox).. The marvel is that China broke the shackles.
known 7y ago
"You are a product of your environment" --Clement Stone http://archive.fo/yPhyn http://archive.fo/yPhyn
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  You’re a product of your genes to an equal degree.
brosinante 7y ago
Well, that's a lot of IQ "truthers" in these here comments.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Based_Detroiter 7y ago
    I know its so disgusting, all these bigots, probably spilling over from The Donald. Remember when Reddit used to be a safe space from these racists, now they're on HN too! What i would give to be safe from all the bad thoughts and ideas which hurt my feels.
- Based_Detroiter 7y ago
  There is no way of getting around that in terms of IQ, you've got to be very elitist in picking the people who deserve to write software. -Bill Gates
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  FWIW, you’re engaging in name calling rather than putting forth a substantive argument. If IQ is discredited, then lay out some sources.
mfbx9da4 7y ago
I don't like how this kind of thinking puts Western life on a pedestal as better than everywhere else.
- neogodless 7y ago
  The kind of thinking that surviving until you're five, having access to healthcare and education, being given opportunities based solely on achievement rather than being deprived of them because of gender or skin color, that's on a pedestal? That's not "Western life." That's just something (some of us want) to strive for.
barking 7y ago
It must be a great comfort to all the people Bill Gates trod over to see the great credit he's getting today for giving a little back.
- renjimen 7y ago
  I'm going to guess that you didn't even read the article.
  - barking 7y ago
    I'll admit that I didn't read it all but that was at least partly because it behaved painfully in my browser (chrome on windows 10).
nickjj 7y ago
What if you make it past your teens? Think about all of those people who immigrated to the US in the 60s-70s (born in the 1940-50s). A lot of them spoke almost no English and did it with almost no money in their pocket. But they thrived. There's so many successful small businesses in the US ran by people of that generation who immigrated (and now their kids). At least in NY. When you're put into situations like that there's no time to think negatively, be anxious, depressed or have other issues that plague so many people today. Your mental health is a big dictator of your future and there's for sure lots of chemical issues involved but I do think in a decent number of cases your environment plays a big role -- but in this case, being in an environment of change / non-extreme comfort from early on (teens and lower) might be an astronomically sized benefit because it sets you up to think in a different way for the rest of your life.
- ip26 7y ago
  Unfortunately I don't have anything close to a source handy, but from what I recall, it turns out many of the successful immigrant businessmen just happened to be businessmen back in their home country. Or bankers, or doctors, or lawyers. So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the US with no money and no English, they did have professional experience & skills.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    > So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the US with no money and no English, they did have professional experience & skills. A lot of them also went straight from the army (forced enrollment) with no skills or higher education to coming over in their early 20s and then found their way in business without needing specialized formal education to be successful (doctors / lawyers, etc.). Lots of food related business, selling clothes, contracting work, etc..
jacquesm 7y ago
Of course who your daddy is is that other really predictive factor, and Gates could have been born in the US and be white, having a dad with a couple of million in the bank surely didn't hurt. It rates a mention in the first paragraph but it isn't reflected elsewhere in the text or the graphics. And if it were it would look like Bill started out from the top of a hill and slid down to the goal of being wealthy rather easily. Of course it was still hard work, but not more of it and not harder than plenty of others that tried just as hard but who did not have wealth to start with.
tombert 7y ago
I was born into a somewhat affluent family, in a somewhat affluent area, and went to somewhat affluent schools, and unsurprisingly I have a pretty decent life where I can afford what I want. It was never a question of "if" I get to go to college, but instead "what college are you going to?", and even though I dropped out, I was still able to find a decent-paying job in tech. Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned all my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't work hard enough. It wasn't until I met my wife, who is smarter than me an also a harder worker, but was born into a poor family, that I realized how silly my viewpoint was. Despite being very well-read and intelligent, she was working as a cashier at McDonalds to help support her mother and sister, living in a more impoverished suburb of Dallas, TX. It wasn't until we were married that she was able to go to college. Even she had it easier than someone born in, say, Uganda, but seeing all this made me realize that while, yes, I have worked hard to get where I am, I shouldn't pretend that it was all me.
- theflyinghorse 7y ago
  > Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned all my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't work hard enough. Do you think that's common for richer folk? That's just mind blowing to me tbh.
  - tombert 7y ago
    I obviously cannot speak for anyone but myself with any kind of certainty, but I don't think that's a completely uncommon viewpoint. I mean, the whole mantra of "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" is more or less predicated upon the idea that your fate is completely up to you.
- majani 7y ago
  Wasn't the affluence you were born into a result of a series of good choices made by your ancestors? And wouldn't you say your wife's decision to marry you was a good decision that has set her up for life? Decisions, not luck.
mistrial9 7y ago
is this the same "think tank" that wanted every elementary school child in America to have standardized, written test scores, maintained in (their) central database?
atemerev 7y ago
This is why open migration is: 1) inevitable (people in every country are becoming well aware about the difference in opportunities and quality of life), and 2) is a good thing.
d--b 7y ago
I find it strange that the Gates always talk about lives that are "healthy and productive". Can't it be "healthy and happy"? Why should anyone seek productiveness?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Because your material circumstances are a big influence on both your health and your happiness. If you're going to be materially prosperous, then either you have to live in a society with generous welfare, or you need well-off parents, or you need to be productive (and not have what you produce stolen from you).
Based_Detroiter 7y ago
TLDR: Sucks to be born with a low IQ in a low IQ country
- bonerman69 7y ago
  RIPelstiltskin
numeromancer 7y ago
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle, and knows.
oriettaxx 7y ago
so, if any wonder why people are ready to risk their life to migrate...
babayega2 7y ago
The article speaks about Chad. A country where the birth rate is around 6 children / woman. I am a developer who comes from a similar country (5.7 c / w) or we are the second poorest country. One thing we have in common with the people who grew up in gethos/projets is violence. It pushes us to stop thinking about what we need beyond surviving... We are wasting time fighting against diseases, addictions, wars (gethos gangs are small compared to the war in Chad, Yemen, Middle East!) or peoples who bicker for $ 10 ... because 10 dollars in our countries is about life or death! Nobody would ever thought that I will be one day (I who was a refugee for 4 years) an experienced developer working internationally... And the funny thing about all this is that it's UNICEF who gave me this chance [0]. [0]: https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-the-burundi-lab-and-beyond-a-junior-programmers-story/ https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-the-...
segmondy 7y ago
This might have been true in the past, but I absolutely no longer believe this. What you know, what information you have, the network you have is more predictive of your future than any other factor. Most of my mistakes in life have been that of being ignorant, just learning bout something much later in life. Something that some people had passed on to them by their parents etc, but I had to discover for myself. Information is the great equalizer. There are of course folks who get information but don't act on it. They haven't received the information that they can move mountains if they stay persistent and act.

375 points by betocmn 7y ago

I seem to remember some story of a dinner party with Gates where he was bragging his intelligence would have allowed him to rise to the top in whatever culture he was born into. Can't find a link to the anecdote however so maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.

makotoNagano 7y ago
Even so, people are allowed to grow and change their ideas.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  I expect so, I just found it amusing. I picture him looking back on his callow middle age with a bemused expression. on edit: finished, got cut off early by interviewer.
strikelaserclaw 7y ago
guy seems to have matured a lot in his later years.
neogodless 7y ago
Can we focus on what the article says rather than on a distraction that focuses on an alleged anecdote about the author from decades ago that does nothing to confirm or refute the research and presentation of this article?
madiathomas 7y ago
Maybe he isn't talking about becoming a dollar billionaire at an early age at any community. Maybe he is talking top in the context of that community. If he was born in a remote village of a third world country, maybe he was going to rise to the top and have more cattle than anyone else, but globally, he was going to be a successful but an unknown herdman. Edit: Removed confusing Latin terms.
- MagnumOpus 7y ago
  > persona non grata That phrase does not mean what you think it means. You're looking for the words "person of no consequence".
  - madiathomas 7y ago
    Sorry. I thought it can also be used for an "insignificant person". I will avoid Latin terms next time.
- jaynetics 7y ago
  persona non grata = unpleasant person. You probably meant "unknown person"? (I don't think there's a canonical Latin phrase for that.)
  - madiathomas 7y ago
    Yes. That's what I meant. Sorry for the confusion.

RickJWagner 7y ago

What does this say of the army of homeless in California? Are they just 'doing it wrong'?

TAForObvReasons 7y ago
They were born to the wrong parents. http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ is a great read about the specific advantages that a trivial percentage of Americans enjoy
anextomp 7y ago
That, on average, they would be worse off if they were born elsewhere. It's a predictor - nobody was suggesting that it's the only factor, or that it's deterministic.
rco8786 7y ago
We don’t know where they were born. But more importantly these studies just prove out that the zip code you are born in is highly correlated to the socio-economic status of your parents. Which is the real predictor for future status.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tunap 7y ago
Edit: NM, removed off-topic content
kranner 7y ago
The first line of the article qualifies the title by adding [being born] "to white, well-off parents who lived in thriving communities and were able to send us to excellent schools."

wcunning 7y ago

The bigger question in my mind is how much geography matters inside one country. For comparison's sake, I think the point of the article works even better to compare a woman in America to a woman in Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, it's a bit apples and oranges -- the kingdom explicitly disallows women to do many things without a man, whereas if there are effects like that in America still, they're definitely much more subtle than being enacted in law. So how does the apples to apples comparison work out? Does geography play nearly as large a role in a country? Does it play as large a role in a smaller, more homogenous country (Sweden, say) than in America?

lotsofpulp 7y ago
The answer is a lot, in the US. That’s because the real predictor is not the piece of land you were born on, but who your parents are, and what kind of resources they (and therefore you) have access to. Here’s a nice website showing data for the US: https://www.opportunityatlas.org/ https://www.opportunityatlas.org/
- non-entity 7y ago
  That was and interesting site, albeit depressing. What I found interesting was the better outlook for those born in the rural midwest compared to almost all of the south.
bluetomcat 7y ago
Once you stop comparing developed and underdeveloped countries, social class has the major weight. It determines the environment of your upbringing, your social circles and so on. Geography in a big, relatively developed country also plays a role as some areas are more densely populated, with better access to good education and healthcare, for example.
hos234 7y ago
Hugely matters even from one block to the next - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/raj-chetty-and-study-hyperlocal-inequality/592612/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/06/raj-chett... As for the American women Vs Saudi women question check out Tara Westover's book Educated (which Gates has also recommended). We are all usually and blissfully unaware of things we don't see even if they are happening right next door.

username90 7y ago

Not sure why they put Melinda's gender as a handicap, it allowed her to get things handed to her on a platter by Bill. She is now loved and famous thanks to spending Bill's money on charity without taking any of the downsides and hate related to starting a company and fiercely clawing yourself to the top like Bill did. I agree that being a woman is a handicap in many situations, but saying that Melinda had to make more sacrifices to get where she is than Bill is laughable.

daliusd 7y ago
Citation needed. Have we read the same thing?
imInGoodCompany 7y ago
I can't find any references in the report to Melinda as an example of gender inequality, and it seems extremly atypical of the Gates' to say that. Which part are you referring to, exactly?
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Well, the title of the article is "HOW GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER STACK THE DECK FOR (OR AGAINST) YOU". Yet they don't provide any examples or evidence that your gender works for or against you _except_ in the cases of poor countries. It seems a little underhanded to imply that women are disadvantaged in western countries - if anything, it's the other way around.
- henryaj 7y ago
  It's in the graph at the top, under the title "Starting Out Ahead" - see the large bump under 'gender' in Melinda's life plot
- trevyn 7y ago
  It’s in the “journey” graphic, where Melinda has to scale a “gender” hump: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/assets/2019-report/starting-out-ahead.png https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/assets/2019-repo...

luckylion 7y ago

"Men enroll in college, women don't" "in every single country". And yet in lots of Western countries, more women enroll in college than men. I find it weird when articles that claim science make claims that are easily challenged by widely available and commonly known data.

goto11 7y ago
These quotes does not seem to occur in the article?
- Izkata 7y ago
  The sentiment is there though - the one place college is mentioned, it's specifically contrasting men and women across all countries.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Gender inequality cuts across every single country on Earth. > Boys’ worlds expand [...] and enroll in high school or college or get a job. > girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands. Emphasis mine.
  - renjimen 7y ago
    If you measure gender inequality by more than just higher education enrollment, then yes, woman are disadvantaged across every single country on Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measures_of_gender_equality

ronnier 7y ago

I’m extremely lucky, I was raised in projects at an early age in an absolutely horrible area and went through middle school and high school there (mother eventually moved out of the projects but in the same city). Random beatings were common once you neared your teen years, I was physically attacked many times just because I was white I guess (judging by the racial words said towards me). But yeah, most people do not do well in life there, they are stuck in a cycle of violence, drugs, and other destructive behavior that they never recover from. It makes absolutely no sense how I was able to make it out and end up doing very well in life. I want to help others break free from the cycle of self destruction but it’s very hard unless you are with them daily. Anyways, to this day I’m thankful for John Carmack for giving me that spark of interest in computers.

apexalpha 7y ago
Glad to hear you've done well for yourself and found a way out in IT. Question though: what do you mean with 'raised in projects'? I can't really Google it. Or is this a reference to the song I find?
- keiferski 7y ago
  > Subsidized apartment buildings, often referred to as housing projects, have a complicated and often notorious history in the United States. In everyday American English, "the projects" often refers to a very dangerous urban residential area, or at the very least, a non-desirable one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_Unit...
  - apexalpha 7y ago
    Ah thank you. Is it synonymous with a Ghetto?
    - keiferski 7y ago
      They are almost equivalent in everyday use, but in actual meaning, they are different. "The projects" strictly refers to the building developments themselves, but is often used informally to refer to a poor neighborhood in general. "The Ghetto" refers to a neighborhood of an urban area and not a particular building or group of buildings. "The projects" are often in the ghetto but not necessarily. Saying "I grew up in the ghetto" and "I grew up in the projects" are more-or-less equivalent. Both only refer to urban areas; there is no such thing as a rural ghetto.

NoblePublius 7y ago

You mean it’s not a coincidence that I was born in Palo Alto and I am now a millionaire CEO?

NoblePublius 7y ago
For all you downvoters, this was a factual and sincere question. :-)

thrower123 7y ago

Ah, magic dirt. It's all to do with the patch of land you hail from, and most definitely doesn't have anything to do with who your parents are, their IQ, or their genetic legacy...

imInGoodCompany 7y ago
The report is saying that where you are born is the most predictive factor in determining how well you will do later in life, compared to other metrics. By the way, how well do your theories on IQ and "genetic legacy" (nice dog-whistle) perform in combination with the actual data that shows pretty much every country in the world improving under almost every metric? Take Bangladesh now vs. 50 years ago for instance. Did the nation's "genetic legacy" magically improve over that time period? Though I guess it must be easier to just attribute your situation to genetic superiority, rather than to theories supported by actual data.
- thrower123 7y ago
  I really don't care to wade into the unproductive morass of population-level IQ. However, if you tell me that somebody's parents average an 85 IQ or have family histories of dyslexia, short-term memory deficits, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, that's more predictive of how well they are going to do in life than what zip code they happen to reside in.
Infinitesimus 7y ago
I'm not sure why you are intentionally choosing the least charitable interpretation of this. No one believes in "magic dirt". When we see such a strong correlation, it leads us to ask questions as a society and sometimes, those point to some uncomfortable truths. Your parents being in a poorer part of town is often because they do not have the means to live in the richer parts with better schools, more socioeconomically accomplished neighbors. Genetic legacy could be a factor but I implore you to do a bit more research on the history of IQ tests as they are today and understand that it is often hard for a measure developed by a benchmarking a non-representstive sample of society is very unlikely to represent the whole. (Check out Radiolab's recent series on Intelligence for example). I'm not sure the kind of life you've experienced but there are several people smarter than you and more capable in many ways who will never get the chance because they never had the access.

bluedino 7y ago

The kids you grew up with or were friends in school with highly impact this as well. Friends with the weird kid that just ate his boogers all day? You guys are probably working at McDonalds together. Hang around the stoners that never got their acts together? You might have ended up the same way. But if you hung out with the kid who went to college? You might have decided to go to the same college and maybe got an internship as his dad's company. Maybe his name was Steve, and you guys took a shared love for electronics and started your own company. So think about this when you decide to buy a house, if you have kids. Your kids neighbors might be the biggest influence on the rest of their lives. Imagine if you had grown up one town over, or on the other side of the tracks, but didn't because your mom liked the kitchen layout in the house you grew up in.

ljf 7y ago
I know exactly what you mean- but is it easy for a kid to make a change? I fell in with certain groups and left others as we either shared an affinity for things or had very different values. There were some groups or friends where I put up with differences as I really wanted to be part of the group, but there were many that just weren't open to me due to my interests and sensibilities. How much I could have changed those things which were already a construct of my upbringing, background, social conditioning etc. I do not know. I guess what I am saying it, why did person X end up being friends with the booger eater and not the chess team? I'll be interested to see how much I can shape the direction and range of my kids friends - but I doubt they'll listen ;)
- shantly 7y ago
  To the extent that one can affect it, I think it has more to do with selecting the entire friend pool, not picking individual friends (which obviously won't work). The friend pool at Phillips Exeter's got a higher top-end of friend quality and a higher bottom-end, generally speaking, than your average public school—the best and worst likely cases for your kids' friend groups are both "better", probably—to pick an exaggerated example. We do the same thing when we choose where to live for the public schools. It's largely about finding better likely friend group outcomes. "Better" kids are easier to teach and their families are more likely to push them academically, so a proxy for that is how "good" the school is (test scores, college readiness, reputation) but it's kinda sorta mostly about the kids with whom your kids will be hanging out 7-8 hours a day.

betocmn 7y ago

Relevant [0]: "The life chances approach suggests that status is not entirely achieved, but is, to some extent, ascribed. Overall, in societies emphasizing ascription, opportunity is relatively low and status (in the sense of prestige in the community) is often inherited. This means that people are, effectively, given their status as a result of the group into which they are born, rather than earning it entirely on merit. Ascriptive qualities such as race/ethnicity, gender, and class of origin can all affect one's life chances. In all societies parents pass on whatever advantages and disadvantages they have to their children". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_chances edit: typo

Tade0 7y ago

I see race* to be a very prominent factor in these charts. On one hand I would like to agree, but on the other I would like to respectfully remind my western friends of the existence of eastern Europe(especially Moldova) and the Balkans, where let's just say that white privilege is not that apparent. *dirty word for me personally. There's one race - the human race.

empath75 7y ago
Bigotry and colonialism takes many forms. Most people in the us wouldn’t make a distinction between anybody from Central America once they crossed the border — they’re all ‘hispanics’, but they have all kinds of problems with ethnic discrimination in places like Guatemala, using racial distinctions that most Americans wouldn’t even recognize.
- dqpb 7y ago
  In other words, race as a category is bullshit.
  - csallen 7y ago
    Whether you believe that or not, there exist many millions who don't, and who treat others differently primarily on the basis of race.
    - dqpb 7y ago
      The problem is that people are treating others differently based on a false categorization.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Hence the need to fight racism and racial discrimination, and to assist those who are excluded by it.
  - empath75 7y ago
    It’s bullshit but if people categorize others based on those meaningless distinctions and act on it, that’s still a problem.

Merrill 7y ago

Americans think progress can fix inequality because we live in a thinly populated country with lots of resources. In particular, since 1800, mostly European immigrants converted the economy from hunting/gathering and neolithic agriculture to modern agriculture. Most parts of the world for most of history have lived at the Malthusian limit with diets ranging from lavish to starvation within the society.

aetherspawn 7y ago

I don’t like how this article spins that doing housework is like a degenerate or bad thing for a woman to do. More housework = more inequality. Uh, ok. It has to be done. That’s how teamwork, works.

yetihehe 7y ago
Maybe it should be viewed as "doing ALL of the housework by woman"? If woman is burdened with taking care of everything, this is imbalance.
- kolinko 7y ago
  Well, it depends if the man is burdened with earning all the money, doesn’t it? While it’s not my preferred arrangement, some families have one partner worry solely about money, and another solely about the housework.
  - nostrebored 7y ago
    I think you mean one partner with the ability to leave the relationship
    - michannne 7y ago
      You don't suddenly become trapped in a relationship when you stop earning money yourself.
      - nostrebored 7y ago
        Your barriers to leaving become much higher when you're staying at home, haven't worked in years, and have a family. Thinking otherwise is dense. I personally know people who are in relationships with horrendous people because they have no exit strategies. This is a common thing people talk about in stay at home circles.
        deleted 7y ago

keiferski 7y ago

Does anyone else have a problem with an American billionaire deciding which worldview should be exported to the world? I'm sure the Gates have only the best intentions, but that doesn't mean that their particular brand of philanthropy is inherently the best solution to the diverse needs of the world's extremely disparate population.

daliusd 7y ago
First, you are oversimplifying everything. Secondly, you absolutely have weight in that - so go on and offer better solution. Maybe your perspective is correct one, but so far you have not offered anything.
buddylw 7y ago
We can have a discussion about weather we should have billionaires in the first place, but Gates is employing his vast resources in an attempt to improve the world with a humble data-driven approach to reduce suffering in the world. For that, I'm quite thankful.
- verbify 7y ago
  Precisely - nobody bats an eyelid when billionaires spend their money on yachts, if they spend their money on philanthropy, it should be applauded.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Bill Gates is busy with a decade long PR effort to whitewash his reputation - successfully. That he does some good along the way is 'collateral upside'.
  - buddylw 7y ago
    I do not pretend to know his motives. All I can see are his actions.
    - jacquesm 7y ago

wuliwong 7y ago

The title of this article is "EXAMINING INEQUALITY HOW GEOGRAPHY AND GENDER STACK THE DECK FOR (OR AGAINST) YOU" The title of this HN post is the header of one section of this article. It should be changed to the article's title.

CommieDetector 7y ago

Where you are born is an function of you parents IQ...

Based_Detroiter 7y ago

Im surprised there is not a single reference to IQ as a predictive factor in life success. More recent studies have shown upwards of 80% IQ heritability. With the average IQ in Africa hovering around 70, your certainly better off being born to parents from Japan than Sub-Saharan Africa.

Bostonian 7y ago
The linked article starts with "We were born in a wealthy country to white, well-off parents who lived in thriving communities and were able to send us to excellent schools. These factors, among many others, put us in a great position to be successful." It would be more intellectually honest if Bill Gates had mentioned his very high IQ as a factor in his success. This article estimates an average IQ of 82 rather than below 70 for sub-Saharan Africans. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000634 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Intelligence Volume 38, Issue 1, January–February 2010, Pages 1-20 A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans M.Wicherts, Conor V.Dolan, Han L.J. van der Maas A response by Lynn and Meisenberg in the same journal, defending the below-70 estimate, is at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609001275 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... .
bonerman69 7y ago
IQ IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
hevi_jos 7y ago
He has. He talks about it at the start. If your body and brain in development does not receive enough nutrients, it does not fully develop. As a volunteer teacher I have seen African kids disconnect after just 2 hours of class because the food they ate was weak in nutrients. This usually happens with iodine. If the pregnant mother has not enough of it, the baby will develop with smaller IQ. The same happened in Africa in sport for a long time. It could not compete with the USA, even when most of them actually were genetically from Africa. In the US, they could develop fully.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

Who give birth to you more in many places. Not where.

baalimago 7y ago

>A big part of the solution is policies that help women and girls carve out new paths for themselves. Well even if they can do this, it doesn't seem to help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

jamisteven 7y ago

I find it hilariously patronizing how they explain things in this article, did they seriously need to mine all this data and do all this research to come to these so obvious conclusions? Poverty, Lack of healthcare and education, clean water, the sins of generations and the cycle that proceeds it, its the basis of every ghetto in the world. Really dont understand what The Gates Foundation is trying to get across with this piece. He has the power, the means, the influence to single handedly change the situation in Chad with zero help from anybody, all they have to do is choose to do it. Yet here we are with all this data and metrics, was this seriously an "ah-ha!" moment for them?! If so, they seriously are detached as the 1%.

AwesomeFaic 7y ago
Maybe going overboard with research and quantitative statements was an effort to make it accessible while combating the notion that they might just be the 1% and blaming poverty etc for others' challenges. Not debating their ability to address these problems directly.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Did they seriously need to mine all this data? Yes, they did. "Everybody knows" is sometimes wrong. If you want to actually fix problems, you'd better know what the problems actually are, rather than just know what "everybody knows".

bluetomcat 7y ago

As cynical as it may sound, we are unequal once we are conceived in our mother's womb. An educated, healthy, grown-up mother has anticipated that moment with great sentimentality and does her best to ensure the best for the baby during the whole course of the pregnancy. Neglected, underweight, malnourished children from less responsible mothers are easy to spot even during their infant period. This is your real start which determines much of your mental and physical health for your while life. Healthy, mentally-stable parents are most likely to have healthy and mentally-stable kids which is the number one prerequisite for enjoying and succeeding in life.

jacquesm 7y ago
I hope you did not mean to imply that all infants that are underweight, neglected and malnourished are so because of their moms bad choices. Some people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still have children.
- bluetomcat 7y ago
  > Some people just happen to have it hard in life and guess what, they still have children. Sure, but let's not try to pretend that those kids will have an equal start.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Of course it won't be equal. But that does not make any statement about their moms.
renjimen 7y ago
> Healthy, mentally-stable parents Do you think that people in Chad are inherently less healthy or mentally stable, or might it be a product of their environment?
- bluetomcat 7y ago
  They are born less healthy because their parents are less healthy due to the harsh environment and due to their parents (the kid's grandparents), and if you extrapolate that for many past generations, you get a nation/race/ethnicity with worse genes which is inherently less healthy.

neogodless 7y ago

Here we have a data-driven article outlining problems in equality of opportunity for humans across the globe, some encouraging success stories and progress, and ambitions to work on fixing scenarios where there's less success, or the change isn't fast enough. The motivation of such an article seems clear and obvious - those with the resources, ability, and of course their own altruistic motivations will have to work on finding and implementing solutions to the problem, that is, by reducing and removing the barriers that exist, especially due to geography and gender. What's much less clear to me are comments about this article that aim to diminish it, or one-off examples to supposedly refute it. Maybe you disagree with the article, and if so, provide data-driven sources to provide us with an alternate perspective that we can evaluate and discuss. Perhaps you have read about some of the solutions that help accelerate the move towards equality, and you wish to share them here. Perhaps you have other suggestions for making the world a better place in our collective future.

tootie 7y ago
It feels like the pretty common reaction of downplaying a bad situation in such a way as to absolve the privileged people of any responsibility. None of this is the fault of anyone alive today. It's a combination of history, geography and bad luck. But we can at least acknowledge it's all true.

baalimago 7y ago

And the more children the U-countries give birth to, the luckier my children will be. Isn't that funny? It's like humanity is intentionally making the odds worse for their own children, and noone is intervening.

sgt101 7y ago

Isn't this a case of driving using the rear view mirror? If we had done this analysis in 1965 I would bet fair that the biggest challenges would have been for people born in southern china; governance (your government would kill you at any moment), nutrition (mass starvation), education (not much of that), disease (plague, cholera, smallpox).. The marvel is that China broke the shackles.

known 7y ago

"You are a product of your environment" --Clement Stone http://archive.fo/yPhyn http://archive.fo/yPhyn

toasterlovin 7y ago
You’re a product of your genes to an equal degree.

brosinante 7y ago

Well, that's a lot of IQ "truthers" in these here comments.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Based_Detroiter 7y ago
  I know its so disgusting, all these bigots, probably spilling over from The Donald. Remember when Reddit used to be a safe space from these racists, now they're on HN too! What i would give to be safe from all the bad thoughts and ideas which hurt my feels.
Based_Detroiter 7y ago
There is no way of getting around that in terms of IQ, you've got to be very elitist in picking the people who deserve to write software. -Bill Gates
toasterlovin 7y ago
FWIW, you’re engaging in name calling rather than putting forth a substantive argument. If IQ is discredited, then lay out some sources.

mfbx9da4 7y ago

I don't like how this kind of thinking puts Western life on a pedestal as better than everywhere else.

neogodless 7y ago
The kind of thinking that surviving until you're five, having access to healthcare and education, being given opportunities based solely on achievement rather than being deprived of them because of gender or skin color, that's on a pedestal? That's not "Western life." That's just something (some of us want) to strive for.

barking 7y ago

It must be a great comfort to all the people Bill Gates trod over to see the great credit he's getting today for giving a little back.

renjimen 7y ago
I'm going to guess that you didn't even read the article.
- barking 7y ago
  I'll admit that I didn't read it all but that was at least partly because it behaved painfully in my browser (chrome on windows 10).

nickjj 7y ago

What if you make it past your teens? Think about all of those people who immigrated to the US in the 60s-70s (born in the 1940-50s). A lot of them spoke almost no English and did it with almost no money in their pocket. But they thrived. There's so many successful small businesses in the US ran by people of that generation who immigrated (and now their kids). At least in NY. When you're put into situations like that there's no time to think negatively, be anxious, depressed or have other issues that plague so many people today. Your mental health is a big dictator of your future and there's for sure lots of chemical issues involved but I do think in a decent number of cases your environment plays a big role -- but in this case, being in an environment of change / non-extreme comfort from early on (teens and lower) might be an astronomically sized benefit because it sets you up to think in a different way for the rest of your life.

ip26 7y ago
Unfortunately I don't have anything close to a source handy, but from what I recall, it turns out many of the successful immigrant businessmen just happened to be businessmen back in their home country. Or bankers, or doctors, or lawyers. So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the US with no money and no English, they did have professional experience & skills.
- nickjj 7y ago
  > So while it's true many of these success stories immigrated to the US with no money and no English, they did have professional experience & skills. A lot of them also went straight from the army (forced enrollment) with no skills or higher education to coming over in their early 20s and then found their way in business without needing specialized formal education to be successful (doctors / lawyers, etc.). Lots of food related business, selling clothes, contracting work, etc..

jacquesm 7y ago

Of course who your daddy is is that other really predictive factor, and Gates could have been born in the US and be white, having a dad with a couple of million in the bank surely didn't hurt. It rates a mention in the first paragraph but it isn't reflected elsewhere in the text or the graphics. And if it were it would look like Bill started out from the top of a hill and slid down to the goal of being wealthy rather easily. Of course it was still hard work, but not more of it and not harder than plenty of others that tried just as hard but who did not have wealth to start with.

tombert 7y ago

I was born into a somewhat affluent family, in a somewhat affluent area, and went to somewhat affluent schools, and unsurprisingly I have a pretty decent life where I can afford what I want. It was never a question of "if" I get to go to college, but instead "what college are you going to?", and even though I dropped out, I was still able to find a decent-paying job in tech. Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned all my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't work hard enough. It wasn't until I met my wife, who is smarter than me an also a harder worker, but was born into a poor family, that I realized how silly my viewpoint was. Despite being very well-read and intelligent, she was working as a cashier at McDonalds to help support her mother and sister, living in a more impoverished suburb of Dallas, TX. It wasn't until we were married that she was able to go to college. Even she had it easier than someone born in, say, Uganda, but seeing all this made me realize that while, yes, I have worked hard to get where I am, I shouldn't pretend that it was all me.

theflyinghorse 7y ago
> Somehow I convinced myself that because I introduced one level of adversity into my life (dropping out), that I was special and had completely earned all my success, and that people who weren't as successful as me just didn't work hard enough. Do you think that's common for richer folk? That's just mind blowing to me tbh.
- tombert 7y ago
  I obviously cannot speak for anyone but myself with any kind of certainty, but I don't think that's a completely uncommon viewpoint. I mean, the whole mantra of "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" is more or less predicated upon the idea that your fate is completely up to you.
majani 7y ago
Wasn't the affluence you were born into a result of a series of good choices made by your ancestors? And wouldn't you say your wife's decision to marry you was a good decision that has set her up for life? Decisions, not luck.

mistrial9 7y ago

is this the same "think tank" that wanted every elementary school child in America to have standardized, written test scores, maintained in (their) central database?

atemerev 7y ago

This is why open migration is: 1) inevitable (people in every country are becoming well aware about the difference in opportunities and quality of life), and 2) is a good thing.

d--b 7y ago

I find it strange that the Gates always talk about lives that are "healthy and productive". Can't it be "healthy and happy"? Why should anyone seek productiveness?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Because your material circumstances are a big influence on both your health and your happiness. If you're going to be materially prosperous, then either you have to live in a society with generous welfare, or you need well-off parents, or you need to be productive (and not have what you produce stolen from you).

Based_Detroiter 7y ago

TLDR: Sucks to be born with a low IQ in a low IQ country

bonerman69 7y ago
RIPelstiltskin

numeromancer 7y ago

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle, and knows.

oriettaxx 7y ago

so, if any wonder why people are ready to risk their life to migrate...

babayega2 7y ago

The article speaks about Chad. A country where the birth rate is around 6 children / woman. I am a developer who comes from a similar country (5.7 c / w) or we are the second poorest country. One thing we have in common with the people who grew up in gethos/projets is violence. It pushes us to stop thinking about what we need beyond surviving... We are wasting time fighting against diseases, addictions, wars (gethos gangs are small compared to the war in Chad, Yemen, Middle East!) or peoples who bicker for $ 10 ... because 10 dollars in our countries is about life or death! Nobody would ever thought that I will be one day (I who was a refugee for 4 years) an experienced developer working internationally... And the funny thing about all this is that it's UNICEF who gave me this chance [0]. [0]: https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-the-burundi-lab-and-beyond-a-junior-programmers-story/ https://blogs.unicef.org/innovation/open-source-tech-in-the-...

segmondy 7y ago

This might have been true in the past, but I absolutely no longer believe this. What you know, what information you have, the network you have is more predictive of your future than any other factor. Most of my mistakes in life have been that of being ignorant, just learning bout something much later in life. Something that some people had passed on to them by their parents etc, but I had to discover for myself. Information is the great equalizer. There are of course folks who get information but don't act on it. They haven't received the information that they can move mountains if they stay persistent and act.