Social capital inequality is the idea that who you know, who your parents were, or even how you're perceived based on superficial traits can open doors and provide advantages completely unrelated to your actual skills or contributions. This isn't just unfair; it's a massive inefficiency, a broken market that fails to invest in total human capacity.

I share new research below that attempts to argue that despite rising income inequality, intergenerational income mobility has remained stable. Their method involves statistically controlling for the fact that "children from affluent families experience faster income growth, even conditional on their own characteristics". Even when rich kids aren't demonstrably better at their jobs, they get ahead faster. Controlling for this, the authors’ model finds no increase in intergenerational economic mobility.

My reaction? Social capital concentration is still capital concentration. Controlling for the advantage granted by socioeconomic background doesn't make the advantage disappear; it is the advantage. A society that truly invests in total human capacity, unlocking potential regardless of background, reaps far greater collective and individual benefits. The social capital of one generation should never be the primary determinant of capital allocation (income, opportunities, influence) for the next. That's a fundamentally broken market system.

This isn't an isolated phenomenon. We see the corrosive effect of status and perception bias distorting outcomes in seemingly meritocratic fields. Author pedigree dramatically biases academic peer review and subjective judgments of leadership based purely on their facial traits predict future promotions of police officers. This isn't about performance on the job; it's about how they are perceived based on appearance or face.

Social capital, status, and subjective bias create drag on our economy by robbing future generations of their full potential. When opportunities and resources are allocated based on factors other than individual merit, squandering the potential of those outside favored circles, it robs us of the future abundance they would have created.

Our work on human development at The Human Trust seeks to break this cycle of societal self-harm. In both education and public health we are developing tools to illuminate and lift the underlying capabilities which truly both better lives and societal contribution: resilience, adaptability, creativity, and so much more. From a foundation model of biobehavioral data to parenting tools like MUSE, we aim to build systems that can identify overlooked talent, provide targeted support, and create pathways for individuals to thrive regardless of their starting point or how others subjectively perceive them. It's about building a truly efficient market for human potential…which ironically involves a whole lot of productive friction.

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Research Roundup

The Rich Get Richer...because we can't be bothered

I love new ideas—they are precious and rare. It turns out one of the biggest challenges to finding new ideas are…Nobel Prize winners (except it’s really our fault, not theirs).

Rather than judging new ideas on their own merit, even experts rely on lazy signals to make their judgment for them. In one study, scientists were asked to “review a paper jointly written by a…Nobel laureate - and by a relatively unknown…early-career research associate”.

Reviewers only rejected the paper 23% of the time “when the prominent researcher is the only author shown” but a whopping 65% of the time when only the “little-known author” was shown. In fact, showing no author was more likely to be accepted (48%) than the lowly associate researcher.

Research repeatedly shows that novel and disruptive ideas are more likely to come from little known scientists, entrepreneurs, and authors breaking into established fields

Recognize My Authority

How should we measure the "potential" of job applicants? I’d like to say it’s about more than just a smiling face, but…

…in the case of police cadets, entirely subjective judgments of leadership based purely on their facial traits strongly predict who gets promoted years later. People viewed “randomly selected photographs of cadets” and evaluated “them for facial traits and perceived leadership ability”. 

As you’ve already predicted, “facial traits…successfully predict promotional success later in the cadets’ careers”. Further, perceived leadership from a photo “successfully discriminate both between no promotion and lieutenant promotion, and sergeant versus lieutenant promotions”.

This directly parallels earlier research face-based competency judgements discriminating CEOs from non-CEOs and even CEOs of large public companies from other execs. But that paper also found that these judgments didn’t “predict company performance”. So, do these face judgements predict officer performance?

More importantly, is this why sexy firemen calendars exit—to decide which of them will rule the firehouse?

Social Capital Inequality

A new paper applied methods to argue that “despite rising income inequality, intergenerational mobility remained largely stable in both countries.” The authors build this argument by controlling for a trick reality in the data: “children from affluent families experience faster income growth, even conditional on their own characteristics.”

There’s no inequality in economic mobility because rich kids getting richer doesn’t count even where the rich kids aren’t any better at their jobs? Social capital concentration is still capital concentration.

A society that actually invests in total human capacity reaps the benefits. The social capital of the last generation should never decide capital allocation for the following generation—that’s a broken market.

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SciFi, Fantasy, & Me

Murderbot. I’ve watched the first few episodes and of course it isn’t the novella series. Unsurprisingly, there are some challenges in translating the inner life of a sardonic, autistic, asexual cyborg to film. I’m still genuinely enjoying the silliness-with-stakes story…and truly love to cameo-ridden instantiation of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon”. I predict more good things (and look forward to eventually meeting ART).

Stage & Screen

• June 9, Philadelphia: "How to Robot-Proof Your Kids" with Big Brothers, Big Sisters!
• Late June, South Africa: Finally I can return. Are you in SA? Book me!
• September 18, Oakland: Reactive Conference
• October, UK: More med school education

If your company, university, or conference just happen to be in one of the above locations and want the "best keynote I've ever heard" (shockingly spoken by multiple audiences last year)?

Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming