Interesting indeed, but not all that relevant to my point.
Regarding the first study: it looks at a small wealth shock (bringing people to the median level of wealth at the time), and compares outcomes (occupational status, literacy, education) that were largely irrelevant to the median people of the time. Simply put, why would you expect people winning a median level of wealth in 1832, a time when the median person was a poorly-literate or illiterate, uneducated, farmer, and then expect that the winners would be more educated, more literate, or have an occupation other than farming? Besides all that, it addresses a different point than the one I'm making. It essentially goes toward showing that poor people, given a windfall of wealth, do not invest it in their childrens' education. But whether your parents invested in your education or not is not a "chosen behavior" on your part. It's an external variable you have no control over. To counter my argument, what you need is a study showing either that rich people don't invest more in their children than poor people, or one showing that such investment doesn't matter.
Regarding the second study, I'm not sure what sort of extrapolations you can draw from a data set that consists purely of people who were already in financial trouble. These people probably have impulse control issues. Is that a "chosen behavior?" It's something we can measure in kids that are just a few years old.
If you really want to discern the magnitude of the impact of "chosen behavior" you have to factor out the effects of things that aren't "chosen behaviors."
The bottom line is that you don't choose your parents, and you don't choose the things you inherit from them. You don't choose your IQ, you don't choose the size of your trust fund, you don't choose to learn how to behave in professional society from an early age, you don't choose many personality factors like attentiveness or impulsiveness, etc. These things are not "chosen behaviors."
Regarding the first study: it looks at a small wealth shock (bringing people to the median level of wealth at the time), and compares outcomes (occupational status, literacy, education) that were largely irrelevant to the median people of the time. Simply put, why would you expect people winning a median level of wealth in 1832, a time when the median person was a poorly-literate or illiterate, uneducated, farmer, and then expect that the winners would be more educated, more literate, or have an occupation other than farming? Besides all that, it addresses a different point than the one I'm making. It essentially goes toward showing that poor people, given a windfall of wealth, do not invest it in their childrens' education. But whether your parents invested in your education or not is not a "chosen behavior" on your part. It's an external variable you have no control over. To counter my argument, what you need is a study showing either that rich people don't invest more in their children than poor people, or one showing that such investment doesn't matter.
Regarding the second study, I'm not sure what sort of extrapolations you can draw from a data set that consists purely of people who were already in financial trouble. These people probably have impulse control issues. Is that a "chosen behavior?" It's something we can measure in kids that are just a few years old.
If you really want to discern the magnitude of the impact of "chosen behavior" you have to factor out the effects of things that aren't "chosen behaviors."
The bottom line is that you don't choose your parents, and you don't choose the things you inherit from them. You don't choose your IQ, you don't choose the size of your trust fund, you don't choose to learn how to behave in professional society from an early age, you don't choose many personality factors like attentiveness or impulsiveness, etc. These things are not "chosen behaviors."