Life Chances

Max Weber argued that class is really a bundle of life chances: the odds a person carries into the world before making a single choice. Set the circumstances of a birth below. Every chart on this page answers for that child, using published data on millions of real Americans. The first three levers nobody chooses. The fourth one is the kind sociologists call achieved, and the second section shows how much the first lever shapes it.

Parents’ income

Race and ethnicity

Gender

Education they end up with

Income mobility

Where this child is likely to land

Bottom fifthSecondMiddleFourthTop fifth

Where the average child of each group lands (mean income percentile reached in adulthood)

Source: Chetty, Hendren, Kline, and Saez 2014 (transition matrix, tax records of 40 million families). Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter 2020 (race, 20 million children). Race data cover Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian children. Asian children in these data show higher upward mobility than all other groups.

School and what it pays

The education ladder

College attendance climbs almost in a straight line with parents’ income: from about 26 percent of children at the very bottom to about 94 percent at the very top. The marker shows this child’s starting point.

Children of the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy-plus college than children from the bottom fifth.

What finishing each level pays (median weekly earnings, US workers 25 and over, 2024)

Sources: Chetty et al. 2014 (attendance gradient), Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, and Yagan, Mobility Report Cards (Ivy-plus), US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Education Pays 2024.

Health and years of life

How long this child can expect to live

Pick an intersection to see (the grayed ones explain themselves)

Between 2001 and 2014, the richest 5 percent of Americans gained about 3 years of life expectancy. The poorest 5 percent gained roughly none.

Sources: CDC/NCHS, United States Life Tables 2023. Chetty et al., JAMA 2016 and its public data tables at healthinequality.org (income and life expectancy, 1.4 billion tax records). IHME, Lancet Public Health 2024 (education gap).

Prison and wealth

The sharpest edges

Percent of men incarcerated on a single day (April 1, 2010, ages 27 to 32, by parents’ income)

What the typical family owns (median family wealth, 2022)

The typical white family holds about 6 times the wealth of the typical Black family and about 5 times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family. American Indian families are grouped into an "other" category in this survey, with a median near $63,000.

Sources: Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter 2020 (incarceration). Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 (wealth).

Talk about it

Weber said a person’s class position is really a set of life chances. After using this page, how would you explain that phrase to a friend in one sentence?
Move one lever at a time. Which single circumstance of birth moved the charts the most? Is that the one you expected?
Why do the children of the rich stay rich? Name the actual machinery: what exactly gets handed down, and at what ages does the handing down happen?
Why would money buy years of life? List every pathway you can think of that runs from a paycheck to a body.
Why does more schooling pay more? Is it what people learn, what the diploma signals, who they meet, or something else?
The black-white income gap in these data is driven almost entirely by men’s outcomes, not women’s. Why would a gap show up so much more strongly for men?
Incomes and wealth tell different stories. The typical white family earns maybe twice what the typical Black family earns, but holds six times the wealth. Why is the wealth gap so much wider? What history is stored in a number like that?
Who benefits from these patterns staying as they are? What would changing them cost, and who would pay that cost?
Everything on this page is a chance, not a fate. What do numbers like these say about any one person’s life? What do they fail to say?