No. 2026-21 - Rags or Riches? Predicting Life Outcomes from the Birth Lottery Across Five High-Income Countries

Abstract:

The stratification of life outcomes is a central concern of sociology, but to what extent can adult outcomes be predicted from childhood circumstances? Although decades of research have identified important family and socioeconomic factors associated with mobility and attainment, these models explain only a modest share of individual variation in outcomes. Using harmonized longitudinal data from the Cross-National Equivalent Files (CNEF) and an ensemble of machine-learning models, we estimate the predictability of adult outcomes in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and South Korea. Predictability varies substantially across outcomes and national contexts: educational attainment is more predictable than economic outcomes, poverty is far more predictable in the U.S., and income mobility is substantially less predictable than overall attainment outcomes. Additional U.S. analyses show that adding race, wealth, parental incarceration, and other variables improves predictions only slightly. We further show that predictability captures a distinct dimension of stratification not fully captured in other traditional measures of mobility, inequality, and opportunity. Together, these findings provide new insights into where and how the birth lottery most strongly shapes life chances.