there’s nobbut three generations atween a clog and clog
dalle stalle alle stelle alle stalle
quien no lo tiene, lo hance; y quien lo tiene, lo deshance
富 不过三代 (wealth does not pass three generations)
First the Vanderbilts (who lost it all) http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/07/14/the-v...
Then the Mellons (who have never been richer) http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/07/08/175-years-...
Probably my favorite series of work from Forbes.
Alfred Vanderbilt was less fortunate. He decided not to take the Titanic at the last minute, but 3 years later was on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed. Despite not knowing how to swim, he gave his life jacket to a young mother and died. (This is an interesting counterpoint to yesterday's article "Does power really corrupt" about how the rich are less caring.)
I'd be fascinated if they did a study on whether noble lineage predicts intellectual performance.
As a piece of side-data, Jews have, for many centuries, been above-average in wealth, and it's well-understood now that they're also above average in IQ. They've also long been discriminated against and sometimes massacred. Even in Nazi Germany, where Jews were openly hated, they remained wealthy. Even after WW2, when their families had been butchered and their homes destroyed and their things stolen, they quickly became wealthy again within a few decades.
In this case, it seems the Jewish IQ advantage consistently weighs more in their favor than their social disadvantages weight against them.
Plus, there are tons of explanations for the advantage besides IQ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence
I mean seriously. Question is there: Why are Jews wealthy? Answer is there: 110IQ. These are obviously the fixed cause and effect; everything else (e.g. culture of intellectual achievement) is just the fuzzy link between them.
Actually, you probably just confuse cause and effect. Why do the jews have higher IQs? Answer: because they are wealthy, so their offspring have had the benefit of better nutrition, better early care, etc, and better selection of healthy and intelligent prospective partners. Tons of hereditary and environmental factors come into play just by being wealthy.
Not to mention that not all -- or even the majority-- of jews are wealthy, nor are all successful. These claims are mostly the province of stereotype, not to say racism.
In the early twentieth century, the world also marveled at Jewish athletes. That isn't exactly the stereotype anymore.
If you perform even a casual examination of Ashkenazi Jewish culture in the United States (if such a monolithic group could be said to exist), you'd see a few fairly common elements: bilingual study from an early age, a strong focus on education as the path to wealth, strong family ties creating a social safety net, kin-group contributions both tangible and intangible, and among the wealthy, all the factors that go along with having wealthy parents.
Wealth confers a bevy of physical advantage: early childhood nutrition, sanitary living conditions, and a stable family environment all come to mind.
Finally wealth conveys a package of invisible advantages: better parenting strategies, more parental involvement, intellectual confidence, social belonging, really an entirely different series of mental models for understanding and navigating the world.
People underestimate exactly how much parents' shape their children's destiny. Data from admissions programs, studied during ththe affirmative action and legacy admissions arguments, demonstrates the single most powerful predictor of a student's likelihood of finishing undergraduate education isn't GPA, SAT, or high school institution; it's the level of education completed by their parents.
The point is that it is very difficult to disentangle the effects of any combination of wealth, genetics, epigenetics, and a particular culture, especially compounded over generations.