<p>The research on eminent people coming from the upper class and next the lower class and both of those classes having far higher representation than per size of the population than the middle class came from the book “Creativity” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996, pages 171-172). He studied 91 eminent people who were alive between 1990 and 1995 and found that about 30% of them came from the lower-class (parents were farmers, poor immigrants, or blue-collar workers) and only about <em>10%</em> came from middle-class families (where the USA had what percentage of middle-class citizens from this era? Sure was higher than 10% by a large margin, but I don’t have an exact figure here). A majority of about 34% had fathers who held an intellectual occupation such as professor, writer, orchestra conductor (I wonder if the study included our son’s mentor, as his father was one of those), or research scientist. The remaining quarter had fathers who were lawyers, physicians, or wealthy businessmen. He only notes that these proportions are way off from the frequency of such jobs in society as a whole rather than actual percentages of society who falls into each group, but I agree that 25-26% falling into that last set seems very high and also the 34% occupations.</p>
<p>The very rich have ways to nurture their children that middle-classand lower-class people don’t and <em>connections</em> to get their children internships, etc. while the very poor (like my mother, who was the first female to graduate from the National War College and was a rare female with a graduate degree in math in her era and also was the first female GS-17 and SES member at the Pentagon back in the days when probably no other female reported to the Secretary of Defense and the President but instead most had secretarial jobs) have high levels of motivation to work hard and “never suffer again” (the one prized possession my mother had was a Shirley Temple doll she bought as an adult as her parents never had enough money to buy it for her; she could have bought herself a closet of mink coats, but that dolls was what she really wanted and she would never let me touch it as it was so cherished by her). The middle-class, meanwhile, generally don’t feel any need to be able to afford country clubs with sky high entry fees as they didn’t have them as children or sky high priced cars as they didn’t grow up with them (though there are exceptions - I grew up with a family owning cars lusted after by others and yet have never had an interest in very expensive cars) and such and so lack both the drive to “finally not have to worry about not being able to afford what most can” and the drive to “keep up with the Trumps” and so are content to be everyday Janes and Joes (like my husband and I are).</p>
<p>Hope this answered your questions. If not, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.</p>