not clear at all. Are you setting a number on talents? 10, 100, 1000? Kids adapt skills via their environment, creating and developing talents in some areas where others don't.
biggest troublemaker kids in schools around here are little rich punks with parents in do whatever you want mode.
My guess is raw "talent" is there in higher income as well in larger percentages, but probably not the percentage we would guess at first pass. More 60/40 than 90/10. Put a kid in a stable, safe, comfortable, environment, and he/she has a better chance of succeeding. This is more likely the case where wealth exists as opposed to where it doesn't due to a myriad of factors.
"proof" is always tough. This study took a genomic approach, and found there to be no significant difference between the groups. But they only looked at people of European descent. They commented that other groups had weaker correlations between wealth and success. So there may be other factors more important for other groups.
friend of mine adopted a kid from Africa. He's my son's best friend. The kids birth father used his bare feet for a living, stomping clay, I believe, daily for hours. So much that he didn't want to wear nice shoes my buddy took to him, in order to keep his feet tough. Sam, as it turns out, can kick a soccerball as far as a pro and is 12. Foot of steel upon contact and the ball makes a crazy sound on a penalty kick. Imo he inherited those strong feet from generations of poor people that had to have strong feet to survive and work. Are we calling that genetics? And can genetics not adapt to environments and create talents out of necessity? I believe they can.
Unless you go full on, and I mean full on nanny state there's no way to address this stuff. There are just a lot of crappy parents out there that won't take advantage of the free benefits government provides their kids due to their low income. They aren't going to be shelling out extra cash to spend their time driving that same kid to ACT prep or clarinet lessons or whatever.
I think there could be innovative ways to address this. One way would be to try and infuse more "career day" type exposure to kids at an earlier age at school. Expose them to fields and jobs they otherwise wouldn't know exist in 5th or 6th grade. And more affordable post secondary education probably has an impact on this too. I'd love to see a comparison of "success" in Tennessee pre and post the 2 years of free community college/trade school.
Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I doubt that would make much impact at all. Very difficult to overcome crappy parenting.
Just posting this because I think Dave Chappelle of [uck fay]ing hilarious and this subject reminded me of this clip. Sorry if its offensive.
