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The power of cross-class friendships to transform lives, improve prospects
Among other things, friends shape the way you see the world and yourself
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Cross-class friendships are a better predictor of upward mobility than school quality, job availability, community cohesion or family structure.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
David Brooks
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(NYTIMES) - If you had asked me a few years ago what we should focus on to expand economic opportunity, I would have trotted out the usual suspects: early childhood education, improved schools, stable families, neighbourhood jobs. Friendships would not have been on the top of my list.
But a giant new study led by Professor Raj Chetty of Harvard University and three others found that poor children who grew up in places where people have more friendships that cut across class lines earn a lot more as adults than children who do not. (The study, published on Monday in the journal Nature, analysed the Facebook friendships of 72 million people, amounting to 84 per cent of American adults aged 25 to 44).
