If poor people don’t vote, will their children be poor as well?

By Christopher Rauh. None of us has any control over the family we are born into. Yet the accident of birth determines a large share of each of our future earnings. Alarmingly, the more somebody’s own earnings depend upon what their parents earned, the more inequality persists. If this dependence – known as intergenerational earnings persistence – is high, a society is characterised by a dynastic structure where the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich. More...