Who Gets Ahead?: The Determinates of Economic Success in America

...is so thoroughly technical that it will tax even the patience of those with intermediate training in statistics...

...If there is one disappointment-in .reading Who Gets Ahead?, it is that Jencks limited himself to cleaning up his scientific results and forewent advancing the provocative political positions in Inequality...

...In this we were mistaken...

...From this Jencks concluded that all marginal social reforms (e.g., increased aid to the schools of the poor) were doomed to failure, failure being an unequal distribution of income...

...differs from Inequality in both method and results...

...By examining his samples of twins and brothers and comparing them to samples of strangers, Jencks finds that family background affects achievement in ways beyond family income or the education and occupation of the parents...

...What made Inequality attractive to its supporters (and bothersome to its detractors) was that its results were counterintuitive...

...E~r those who take the question of income inequality seriously, .Jencks' rcsuhs are probably distressing because they are so obvious...

...All that was left, announced Jencks in a "Today" show interview, was "luck...

...This is what led _9 &eptics to re-examine the data and the methods, but it is also what attracted the New Left (with which most of the co-authors sympathize strongly...

...Clifton White, William A. Rusher, and John Ashbrook of Ohio launched the Draft Goldwater for President movement at a meeting in Chicago on October 8, 1961...

...O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right...

...Those who do not accept that assumption will have a much different view of Jencks' work...

...as senator that running for the White House in 1964 would force him to forego...

...In Inequality they found a means of telling the public that everything it saw, experienced, and believed about how people get ahead in this country was illusion or anecdote, and that chance was the real distributor of rewards...

...But if any one process is more representative than the others,Jencks concludes, it is the one whereby families (through measurable and unmeasurable w,ays) pass on "abilities" (high test scores) to their children which are then translated into educational achievement...

...Jencks and his collaborators argued that significant inequality existed in America and that virtually none of that inequality could be explained by individual differences in family background, intelligence, or, most important, education...

...Nevertheless, the bandwagon started to roll, and by mid-1963 it was apparent that Goldwater would very probably be nominated whether he liked it or not...

...Somebody--perhaps Steve Shadegg--has worked over this rambling and discursive body of material, pulling it into shape and chronological order and adding, here and there, bits of connective tissue or exposition...

...Lastly, though a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, he bore no trace of the ideologue, and as a professional Republican politician he instinctively distrusted the hot-eyed polysyllabicists who were soon clambering all over his unauthorized bandwagon...

...J.R...

...Indeed, the appropriate response to the way Jencks frames the question, "Who gets ahead...

...pared to men's later occupational and economic success, it was clear that the "leaders" had done better than others...

...Dubious and deeply reluctant, he must have felt rather like Hamlet: "The time is out of joint...

...His new results show, I think, that better data and careful methods usually make "startling" social science findings much less shocking...

...new and better data and methods now move Jencks to estimate that those numbers could be as high as 60 percent and 40 percent, respectively...

...When these subjective estimates of leadership were com...

...and I will be heard...

...While these differences may not seem important to the untrained reader, they have led to very d i f f e r e n t conclusions...

...fare state is one in which people decide (for better or worse) that there are a certain number of economic areas in which money should matter less and where a "social net" should be in place...

...The growth of the American welfare state has undoubtedly changed the distribution of income (mostly at the lower end of the scale), but that seems quite beside the point...

...Goidwater's career has at various William A. Rusher is publisher of National Review...

...If this is true, and I think it is, then it is clear that the American "creed" is much more consistent with a welfare state than a redistributive one...

...His last chapter, "What ls To Be Done...

...Marc Platmer has suggested, in a recent issue of the Public Interest, that the ideological basis of a welfare state is radically different from that of a redistributive state, and that the former does not naturally transform itself into the latter...

...In addition, forgivably, he valued more highly than we the third term...

...Goldwater believed he knew, far better than we did, how unlikely it was that he could be elected...

...Each year in college is much more important than each year in high school, and the last year in each institution is as important as the other three combined...

...The authors of Inequality seemed so confident of their results that they thought it should be used to convince the public (which needs much convincing) that income inequality is indeed a grave problem...

...bo Gets Ahead...

...J e n c k s has limited the new book to two of the many questions previously addressed in Inequality...

...There was abroad in the land during the 1950s a restless new conservative mood that urgently demanded political expression...

...The problem, of course, is that no one seems to want to redistribute income, and until Americans are convinced by socialists like Jencks that the idea of income equality is politically important, books like this will remain slightly irrelevant...

...This, of course, does not disabuse him of his egalitarianism (since egalitarians seem to be born, not made), but he does provide a more reasonable explanation of the distribution of income...

...Jencks' new surveys allow him and his collaborators to reach stronger conclusions about the importance of background in general, and about the process by which some achieve success and others do not...

...The welfare state grows by taking over portions of the private economic sphere one issue at a time, not by pursuing the nebulous goals of income or, more broadly, social equality...

...ls anyone surprised...

...He became agreeably entangled with the GOP in his native Arizona back in the late 1940s, and undoubtedly wouldn't have objected if it had simply carried him, as in fact it did, to the United States Senate, there to serve, loyally and patriotically, until honorable retirement was indicated...

...This depends, as one reviewer of Inequality pointed out, On whether we say the glass is half full or half empty...

...It seems safe to say that when social research properly addresses large social issues it usually finds that "people's long-held notions" (a favorite pejoration) are nearly correct, and when the results differ from popular notions the differences are so subtle that they become politically unimportant (although they remain scientifically interesting...

...Academic test scores also appear to be more important than suggested in lnequah'ty...

...In 1972, the year of George McGovern, the "problem" of social inequality was the primary concern of social researchers, and the book by a social scientist which emerged to capture the most public attention was Christopher Jencks' Inequality...

...but something--let's take the easy way out and call it Fate--decreed that it would be Gotdwater, rather than Knowland or Jenner or Curtis, who would carry the conservative banner to smashing victory in the Republican convention of 1964...

...All of these demographic characteristics are "important," but not equally so, and most of the results could have several interpretations (e.g., employers could be looking for high test scores rather than just ability...

...The product of that effort is IVho Gets Ahead...

...Inequality found that only 50 percent of the variance in occupational status and 22 percent of the variance in income could be explained by these attributes...

...But the tone and views are unmistakably Barry Goldwater's, and the result is a book that belongs in every library, public and personal, concerned with American politics in the third quarter of the twentieth century...

...And if it weren't enough that Jencks deals with the current bugaboo of achievement tests and ability, he also examines individual "leadership," as measured by students' high school counselors...

...This is what other countries call sociali 5. rrl, But times change, and so does social research...

...As Goldwater proudly notes, "I received more votes than any candidate in either party had ever achieved on the first ballot of a contested convention where the roll call was permitted to continue to conclusion without allowing any state to change its votes: 883 out of 1,308--more than twice as many as the combined first-ballot votes of all other candidates...

...Pole, in his recent, well-received book, The Pursuit of Equality In American History, argues that while the idea of equality has played an increasingly important role in our history, equality of income has never caught on...

...Indeed, how could a book making the claims it did fail to gain attention...

...Moreover, all of these characteristics not only work independently to affect success, they also work through each other...

...but on December 8, 1963, at a meeting of his closest cronies (not a single member of the Draft Committee, significantly, was there), Goldwater decided--correctly, in my opini o n - t h a t he "bad planted the flag on the hilltop...

...Education then opens the doors to better occupations and higher earnings...

...What shall be said, at last, of Barry Goldwater...

...is probably: "Who cares...

...Of course, political importance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder...

...The ideological excesses of Inequality were clearly a product of the early seventies, but at least the book made an argument for the political importance of its results...

...Whereas .lencks concluded previously that luck determined the rest of the inequality that was measured, he and his new collaborators attribute much of the remaining inequality to labor-market imperfections, unmeasured attributes, and measurement error...

...I was as deep as it was possible to get in the plot to coopt Barry Goldwater for conservatism's purposes (as he well knows: "F...

...It is just as easy to maintain that by explaining at least one-half of inequality (and here I think Jencks interprets his data conservatively) with scientific methods and data that are rudimentary by the standards of the natural sciences, we have done quite well...

...when compared to other types of tests (e.g., personality tests), they are robust predictors of later success...

...By characterizing "conservative" and "elitist" positions as claiming that the United States is a perfect meritocracy (as measured by imperfect test scores and educational attainment), they set up the reader to conclude that "we have a long way to go...

...He thereupon promptly sidelined the ~2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1980...

...It is time for his memoirs--and here they are: dictated, as is his custom, into a recording machine, with the helpful stimulus of gleanings from his "Alpha File," itself consisting largely of contemporary memoranda about important people and events in his life...

...Kennedy's assassination that November, putting a conservative Texas Democrat in the White House, made the prospect of Goldwater's actual election still more remote...

...While Inequality was essentially a political tract interspersed with statistics, Who Gets Ahead...

...S o c i a l scientists as a whole are neither biased, ignorant, nor dishonest, but they always produce a view of social reality that is limited by the types of questions which they find important at a particular time...

...Jencks and his new collaborators have removed much of the rhetoric but the theme remains the same...

...times followed two quite distinct though related trajectories: the rise of the modern conservative movement, and the ongoing progress (if that's the word for it) of the Republican Party...

...So a year laterJencks put together a new research team, better data sets, and large federal grants to try it all again...

...Goldwater was only one of a number of senators outspokenly sympathetic to the conservative cause...

...For this and other reasons, no one "model" will represent what determines economic success in all cases...

...Who Gets Ahead?, dealing with the same ideologically charged issues, closes with the rather weak statement that " i f we want to redistribute income, the most effective strategy is probably still to redistribute income...

...Bur it wasn't to be quite that easy...

...Finally, Jencks confirms that education is the most powerful predictor of success, though every year of education is not equally important...

...The first is the total amount of variance in men's occupational status and income that can be explained by demographic characteristics such as family background, education, race, academic ability, and noncognitive traits...

...Who Gets Ahead...

...now I must defend that flag...

...Much of the debate about the new book will undoubtedly centeron methodological points (especially the way in which Jencks "synthesizes" the results of the 11 surveys he examined), but those quibbles are best taken up elsewhere...

...assumes that income inequality is inherently suspect and that finding what determines that inequality is important social research...

...A wel...

...It wasn't the majority view, but its proponents had almost the messianic fervor of William Lloyd Garrison: "I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch...

...As the "spirit of '72 wore off, it became clear to other researchers, and to Jencks, that the conclusions in Inequality were overstated, the quality of the data was poor, and some of the statistical methods were clearly wrong...

...Even though he has decided to run for re-election as senator in 1980, his role in the great political events of our era has long since been fixed and targely played...

...ended thus: If we want to move beyond this tradition lof marginal reform], we will have to establish political control over the economic institutions that shape our society...

...No quick summary can do justice to the elegant analysis Jencks conducted or the social processes at work...

...So his bandwagon rolled on, to-and through--the convention...

...We didn't have, or ask, his permission, but his Conscience of a Conservative had made him by far the best known political spokesman for our cause, and it simply didn't occur to us that he might actually feel uneasy with a group whose only crime was that it earnestly wanted to nominate him for President...

...But.lencks is an honest researcher, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1980 31 and when better data were made available and b e t t e r s t a t i s t i c a l methods were suggested, he used them unflinchingly...

...George McGovern's extremely mild form of guaranteed income, as well as Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, were both hooted off the stage because they smelled strongly of income redistribution...

...More interesting is what the new book has to say about the importance of each of the individual personal attributes...

...These unmeasured" characteristics are important and, .lencks admits, probably include parents' genes and such intangibles as "home environment" and "values...