Birth Lottery Controls Your Life More Than You Think

Birth lottery consists of many factors that determine your future. Things like geography, race, family finances, parent’s education level, and environment influences where you are going in life. It’s things that are given to us outside of our control. In short, it’s very unfair.

No matter where you were born, everyone does not have an equal opportunity to make a good living or become successful. A child born to a family of doctors have an unfair advantage of knowing what it takes to become a doctor. Same with lawyers, investment bankers, and the like.

Even though it’s still not a guarantee that the child will make a living in those high paying professions, it gives the child a leg up. We are living in the information age where information is everything. Knowing the correct information is highly valuable.

The birth lottery is actually a cruel and unfair reality in this world. None of us chose our parents, where we should be born, nor when we are born. It was all forced on us. Yet some people will live a life of luxury while others will struggle. No matter how much we want everyone to have equal opportunities, they don’t.

If you are capable of reading this blog on the internet, you’ve already won the birth lottery. English is an almost universal language in the world. Additionally, only 53.6% of the world are internet users as of 2019. Granted, some non-users is due to choice rather than necessity.

However, it’s no secret that an internet user has a tremendous edge and advantage over a non-internet user. It’s impossible to compete in today’s world on anything without the internet.

What is the Birth Lottery?

The birth lottery is the argument that none of our successes and failures are our own. Since none of us chose our race, geography, parents, and more, we can’t take credit or blame for our successes and failures. The winners and losers of the birth lottery doesn’t deserve all of the admiration or finger blaming towards them.

Whether we choose to admit, accept, or want it or not, the birth lottery is prevalent in our everyone’s lives. Someone who started with a million dollars inherited from their parents will have a tremendous advantage over someone who started with $0, or worse, debt. Sure, you can argue that the one with nothing has more motivation and grit.

However, it’s still better to be in the million dollar position.

Jeff Bezos‘s parents invested $300,000 (worth about $530,000 today) in exchange for 6% of Amazon when Jeff was first starting out. While it was an investment, not every one of us has parents who can give us more than half a million dollars to start our own companies. 90%+ of us don’t.

While Jeff Bezos technically wasn’t born into his step-dad, he still didn’t choose who his step-dad should be. Yes, it was completely due to the choices he’s made with Amazon that made all the difference in the world. However, a business can’t be started without money. Setting up a legal corporation costs money.

That is the power of the birth lottery. Your successes and failures will never be 100% because of you. One thing that you can do is that you can utterly DESTROY that social share button for the Google algorithm to help get the message out to your friends and network!

But in seriousness, let’s explore the uncontrollable factors that matter in your journey to success.

What Things Matter in the Birth Lottery?

There are many things that matter in winning the birth lottery. I’ve outlined the important ones below. I ordered them based on the highest priority to the least. However, that still doesn’t mean that the least priority factor is meaningless. It still matters.

It just happens that it matters the least on a relative basis.

1) Geography

The number one factor that determines your birth lottery is where you were born. It doesn’t matter if you were born in the most loving and supporting household in the entire world. I don’t care whether you were born white, black, or any other race. If you were born in North Korea, the opportunities aren’t just limited. Opportunities are extremely limited. Arguably non-existent.

A person born in an abusive household in America is better off than a person born in the most loving household in North Korea. You can’t even change where you live if you were born in North Korea without risking your life.

In less extreme cases that isn’t North Korea, there’s always the option for you to change where you are living. However, the burden of moving is still on you. Compared to a person just born in a developed country, you are still fighting an uphill battle. It’s still up to you to change the default of losing the birth lottery.

2) Race

Your race matters in determining how good of a birth lottery you won. No matter where you are born, living in line with the majority race will always be better than living with the minority race. Democracy, although highly flawed, is the best form of government there is today.

Who does democracy favor? The majority. A white person living in America will have it better than an Asian, Mexican, Black, or any other race, all else equal. A Chinese person living in China will have it better than another race living in China, all else equal.

We don’t choose what our genetic material is. It was given to us. However, you aren’t doomed from the start. It just means you’ll have a harder time achieving the things you want to achieve.

As a minority in the United States, I’ve faced countless racism in my life. Although I didn’t let that hold me back, it still affected me. Something that the majority races don’t have to experience.

3) Family Finances

Your family finances tremendously influences your own finances. Even if you still don’t live under the same roof anymore. Things that people need in the modern world to gain an advantage costs money. Things like college, a car, and basic necessities costs an exorbitant amount of money. Some families don’t have access to this because of a lack of affordability.

Sure, there are need based aid that is offered for people to still attend college. However, need based aid might not cover every aspect of your living expenses. Then you have to take on a part time job that takes focus away from your studies.

Compared to someone whose parents can cover every single one of those expenses and then some, you could be at a disadvantage. It’s an overlooked factor in determining the birth lottery.

4) Parent’s Education Level

There is no doubt that your parent’s education level influences the family’s finances. Below shows the median family’s net worth of all families versus a family head with a four-year college degree. The four year college degree family wins by a mile and then some.

Compare that to the income levels of families without a college degree.

The median income for a non-grad families is less than half of a family with a college grad. The difference continues to widen as time passes. Upward mobility is difficult when you take a look at the statistics. The birth lottery is set up such that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

It will be difficult, if not impossible to change this trajectory on a bigger scale. There are individual outliers, of course. However, the outlier doesn’t represent the whole.

5) Environment

Other people’s thoughts and viewpoints on life influences your well being as well. If someone was born in a neighborhood with criminals and think and act like them, there’s a high chance that person will become a criminal as well. We are social creatures and peer pressure is real.

Other people’s choices have a bearing on our own choices, no matter how hard we try to fight it. If we are waiting by a cross walk and see others crossing even with a red light, we tend to follow with them. Even without double checking whether the light was green for us to proceed.

I used to live in a very quiet and unimpressive city. When I first moved to a higher functioning city, it actually opened my eyes to a whole another side of the world. Had I stayed in the city I lived before, I would have ended up just like them.

Which isn’t a bad thing. It would have just been something I wouldn’t want.

You Can Lose the Birth Lottery and Still Win

Your life is still up to you. Your life is long. What matters is how you play your cards that you’ve been dealt. The cards you’ve been dealt still matters, but you can still make it out stronger and better than you’ve ever expected. Don’t be a statistic where the psychological aspects of upward mobility makes you believe you will end up like the others.

It’s just a mental block. Plenty of people have done it and plenty of people will continue to do it. None of my family members are or ever were millionaires. If I become one, I would be the first one in my family to do so. Will I get there? You’ll have to keep on reading to find out. However, I am confident I will get there.

The birth lottery is definitely a hard thing to escape from. The data is there. It’s therefore up to you to put in more effort than necessary to get to where you want to be. None of us are born with equal opportunity. Some have a better or worse chance than others.

Even with extreme and dramatic policy changes that allow people to have equal opportunity, it’s not going to solve it. The rich are already so far ahead that it’s quite difficult to change the fact that rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Therefore, others are not going to solve the problem that comes with the birth lottery. It’s going to be up to you to solve the problem for yourself. There’s no excuses. If you have access to the internet, there’s endless free resources to get the results you want.

Consistently reading personal finance blogs is a great way for you to avoid becoming a statistic.

You Can Win the Birth Lottery and Still Lose

Just as you can lose the birth lottery and still win, the opposite is true as well. There are actual cases of people winning millions from the literal lottery only to end up bankrupt after 5 – 10 years. The same concept applies to the birth lottery as well.

Plenty of people have squandered the hand they’ve been dealt. It could be because they don’t know how blessed they are. Or it could be because they don’t know how to play the hand they’ve been given. What good is getting dealt a pair of aces if you don’t know how to raise?

The saying is that the first generation builds it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it. Just as there’s rags to riches stories, there’s plenty of riches to rags stories. 60% of NBA players file for bankruptcy five years after retirement.

This is a prime example of poor financial literacy taking a toll on yet another human being. If the NBA players consistently read personal finance blogs, maybe they’d be able to avoid that fate. The birth lottery matters to an extent but your choices matter your ultimate fate.

If you did win the birth lottery and was born in the United States, then thank your lucky stars. You have an opportunity that many in the world aren’t given. Don’t waste it, your life is way too precious to let it go by and waste the golden opportunity you’ve been given.

Complacency is the worst enemy that you must fight against. It has ruined lives and bankrupted businesses and will continue to do so. Always strive to be better and never give up.

Take Purposeful Steps

There are some things that are way outside of your control for you to make money. Your career trajectory somewhat depends if your boss likes you. The quality of your work matters, but whether your boss likes you matters as well. Raises work in such a manner too.

If you are heavily invested in equities, how well the stock market does is beyond your control. Things like policy changes, company decisions, and consumer behavior are some of the things that you don’t control.

You may be making a killing by being born at the right time. You may also have lost by investing just before the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

As a result, take note of the things that you can control and let everything else fall where they may. Consistently invest and put aside money from your paycheck to the stock market. Don’t buy again but maintain things so you can save as much money as you can.

It’s no accident that most millionaires are self-made. There are some that made it through inheritances but the majority did it by taking purposeful steps towards their goals. You can take charge of your life more so than ever before. I am giving you the blueprints of what you can do to get there.

The circumstances of your birth matters to an extent. However, it is what you do with the gift of life that matters. You are the driver of your car. The environment such as the quality of the road, other drivers’ abilities, and more matters. However, you always have control of the steering wheel. Where are you trying to take yourself to?

Don’t let the birth lottery be a reason why you can’t be successful.