You will more likely than not achieve the same level of education as your dad's

Here's another argument that the United States does not have the level of social mobility we think we do. People tend to attain to the level of education that their parents do - in this case their fathers:

If your father didn't graduate high school, then you are 8 times more likely not to graduate high school than if your father did. If your father graduated college, then you are 3 times more likely to graduate college than if your father didn't.

You would think this would be a result of income inequality. Fathers who don't graduate high school, with children who don't either, tend to be much poorer than fathers who have, with children who have. That's true.

But you'd be wrong to think that this effect is largely explained by income. It's not. Intergenerational inequality in educational attainment persists after adjustment for income inequality.

The data suggest inequality is a problem of families, not of individuals. Even among the poor, basically every person whose father graduated college graduates high school themselves, and 40 percent or so graduate college. Whether your father graduated high school is much, much more predictive of whether you have than how much you make.

So how might this alter our attitude towards education policy?