PROMOTING POTENTIAL 315childcare, cooks and nannies, private healthcare, holidays abroad, second
homes, boats, private club membership fees, and so on. All this provides
for healthier lifestyles promoting physical growth and cognitive
vitality.^39
Inherited wealth also does much to promote children up institutional
ladders to positions of infl uence and power, irrespective of ability. Paying
for attendance at private schools (about 10 percent of school students in
the United States and 8 percent in Britain) is a major route to such ends.
Such schools, with high expectations, tend to be much more focused on
gaining entrance to higher education and occupations. Th ey therefore
have more rigorous academic programs geared to coaching for the SAT
and other exams.
Perhaps just as impor tant is that private schools ensure networking
with people in infl uential positions. In that way, social class patronage
is won, including preferential access to capital and enhanced lobbying
power. With that comes a wider perception of society and cognitive en-
gagement with it. In consequence, we get a preponderance of ex- private
schoolchildren in power ful positions in all the institutions of developed
countries, especially politics.
Perhaps even more importantly, inherited wealth creates power ful psy-
chological eff ects. Even relatively small amounts, including the expecta-
tion of inheritance, can engender a sense of economic security, house hold
stability, and predictability of circumstances. Psychological research in
the United Kingdom and the United States has shown how these benefi ts
include increased sense of personal security, self- effi cacy beliefs, and self-
confi dence.^40 Th ese foundations, in turn, promote po liti cal interest and
participation, future orientation and planning, confi dent career focus,
and secure grounds for risk taking.
Interestingly, in spite of its signifi cance for individual diff erences,
inherited wealth rarely fi gures as an environmental factor in child devel-
opment studies or as candidate causes of individual and social class dif-
ferences (the nearest we get to it is an SES category). I have never heard it
suggested that, in the interests of equality of opportunity, inherited wealth
should be abolished. Perhaps it confi rms that diversions of attention to
genes and IQ, the “wars” on parents and schools, and a few compensatory
programs have more to do with the ideology of maintaining a class
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