If The Shoe Fits: a “Self-Made” Reminder
by Miki Saxon
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.
Last year I wrote that no one is a “self-made” anything, with backup from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The media loves attaching the “self-made” label, shining a spotlight and making it seem that anyone willing to work hard enough can become a billionaire, or at least a multi-millionaire.
It’s not just all the people along the way, but also where you come from and how privileged your background.
The latest self-made billionaire is 21-year-old Kylie Jenner who claims the self-made title, because she didn’t inherit her company, i.e., bootstrapped it using her own money.
No help, did it herself.
Of course, that self-made label ignores a few significant factors.
Still, it’s obviously absurd to attach the phrase “self-made” to Jenner, who is part of the wildly successful Jenner-Kardashian clan. While she is clearly savvy about marketing and promotion, Jenner grew up in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the world with access to every advantage money could buy ― including years of self-promotion on a successful reality television show. The value of her makeup company lies in the celebrity she accrued via her family.
So is “self-made” more nature or nurture? According to new research from Sandra Black, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the answer is nurture.
The environment you grow up in ― the quality of education your parents can afford to give you, the investments they make in you, the relative affluence of your neighborhood ― is almost twice as important as biology.
It’s not a case of denying the success of Kylie Jenner, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Nick Woodman.
It’s a case of recognizing how the advantages they enjoyed reduced risk, lowered barriers, smoothed the road, and made the journey easier.
If you still doubt that parents aren’t a big deal and nurture doesn’t carry all that much weight, take a look at a currently breaking scandal over the lengths to which parents will go to get their kids into a top university.
Image credit: HikingArtist
