It takes a village to raise a millionaire

When Meizhu Lui visited an alternative high school in Boston - a place where youths are often assigned after being kicked out of a regular high school for behavioral or other problems - she asked a class: Who expects to be a millionaire?

The answer was telling. About a third of the students held up their hands. Although mostly poor and disadvantaged, these young Horatio Algers clung to the ideal of America as the land of opportunity (though mostly through sports and music rather than business).

Unfortunately, their prospects of reaching the top of the economic ladder are fading in the United States. It's becoming a nation of more rigid inequality, starting at childhood. That, anyway, is the conclusion of some recent research.

A new report by Ms. Lui's United for a Fair Economy (UFE), a liberal advocacy group based in Boston, done in conjunction with an affiliate, Responsible Wealth, finds that economic success usually depends on help from society, and often more on wealth and privilege than talent and dedication.

For instance: Almost a third of the Forbes 400 richest people were born onto that list, with an average net worth of $2.6 billion. Another quarter inherited a small business, oil lands, or perhaps had well-to-do parents able to provide an expensive education and family friends helpful in a business career.

Meanwhile, income mobility between generations has been falling, concludes Bhashkar Mazumder, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, in a 2003 paper. Most children of rich parents stay rich, and children of the poor stay poor. When compared to Canada, Finland, and Germany, the US stands out for "its relative lack of mobility," he says.

That implies that the increased inequality in incomes in the US in the past few decades, "is likely to remain a feature of the US economy for some time," he adds.

Such conclusions are troubling for a culture that for so long has believed in the self-made man and woman.

And yet, as even some rich people admit, it takes a village to make a millionaire.

"Society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned," Warren Buffet, the wealthy founder of Berkshire Hathaway, has said.

"Lots of people who are smart and work hard and play by the rules don't have a fraction of what I have," Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, told Forbes Magazine in 2001. "I realize I don't have my wealth because I am so brilliant."

Dr. Schmidt is likely to become a billionaire overnight when his firm goes public, probably later this month.

Of course, individuals can and do make important contributions to the economy and society by working hard and intelligently. From Carnegie and Rockefeller to Sam Walton and Paul Allen, the US boasts a pantheon of corporate moguls who rose from modest beginnings.

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