The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite... the number of people who get rich by singing or kicking a ball is tiny compared with the number who become wealthy or influential through brainpower.
"As technology advances, the rewards to cleverness increase...,raising the demand for those sharp enough to make sense of it. In 1991 the average wage for a male American worker with a bachelor's degree was 2.5 times that of a high-school drop-out; now the ratio is 3. Cognitive skills are at a premium, and they are unevenly distributed."
Parents who graduated from university are far more likely than non-graduates to raise children who also earn degrees. This is true in all countries.
Saving the world???
The cost of higher education has contributed to plummeting birth rates among pushy parents in other rich countries, too. Greens may rejoice at anything that curbs population growth, but the implications of these trends are troubling. Demography makes it harder for people who start at the bottom of the ladder to climb up it.
And that has political consequences. -Economist