Cognitive Ability and Social Mobility

Richard V. Reeves of Brookings has a great graph on how the two interact -- cognitive ability is measured by the ASVAB (which I've used in a couple RCP posts):

Basically: Being smart helps. So do rich parents. You can see a similar graph using measures of motivation if you click through to his post above.

Robert VerBruggen is editor of RealClearPolicy. Twitter: @RAVerBruggen