Hillbilly Elegy

findings surprised a lot of people, but
not me. And not anyone who’d spent any
time in these areas.
In a paper analyzing the data, Chetty
and his coauthors noted two important
factors that explained the uneven
geographic distribution of opportunity:
the prevalence of single parents and
income segregation. Growing up around
a lot of single moms and dads and living
in a place where most of your neighbors
are poor really narrows the realm of
possibilities. It means that unless you
have a Mamaw and Papaw to make sure
you stay the course, you might never
make it out. It means that you don’t have
people to show you by example what