Children in the U.S. are told from an early age that hard work pays off, starting with their time at school. ﻿ But according to a recent report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), "Born to Win, Schooled to Lose," being born wealthy is a better indicator of adult success in the U.S. than academic performance. "To succeed in America, it's better to be born rich than smart," Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the CEW and lead author of the report, tells CNBC Make It. "People with talent often don't succeed. What we found in this study is that people with talent that come from disadvantaged households don't do as well as people with very little talent from advantaged households."

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Carnevale and his team analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to trace the outcomes of students from kindergarten through adulthood, assessing intellect according to performance on standardized math tests. The researchers then categorized students by socioeconomic status, considering household income, parents' educational attainment and parents' occupational prestige (a measure of social standing, power and earnings ability as defined by the Duncan Socioeconomic Index). What they found was that poor kindergartners with good scores are less likely to graduate from high school, graduate from college or earn a high wage than their affluent peers with bad grades. Specifically, the study found that a kindergarten student from the bottom 25% of socioeconomic status with test scores from the top 25% of students has a 31% chance of earning a college education and working a job that pays at least $35,000 by the time they are 25, and at least $45,000 by the time they are 35. A kindergarten student from the top 25% of socioeconomic status with test scores from the bottom 25% of students had a 71% chance of achieving the same milestones. Even if students from disadvantaged households do beat the odds and earn a college degree, they still face challenges. The Georgetown study found that kindergartners from low socioeconomic status families who scored in the top 25% and later earned college degrees had a 76% chance of reaching high socioeconomic status by the age of 25. By comparison, their low-scoring, high socioeconomic status peers who earned college degrees compared had a 91% chance of maintaining their status.

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