In today's society, education is a nessecity on the road to success. To obtain a quality education, it is necessary for one to have responsible and caring parents. But how much effect does a parent have on the outcome of one's success? It is not what the parents do for the children, but what they are? It turns out that parents who have a higher education tend to have smarter children that the parents who go the extra mile to read to their kids every night and so forth. All the extra help such as the HeadStart Program can only do so much, the outcome of a child's life is more dependant on the resume of the parents. Contradictory to emperical ideas, the amount of television viewed by the child or the amount of video games played by the child hardly affects the success of a child.
The name of a child doesn't determine his/her success, rather, their names are an indicator of their socioeconomic status which influences their life. Certain opportunities and resources are only available to the more fortunate and economically stable of families. These are the factors that determine the life one is to have. Names are but indicators of socioeconomic status. The wealthy tend to have more uncommon names because they make them up while the names of the monetarily challenged are those that have been hackneyed by the rich. Although parents name their children with names that "sound" successful, they won't succeed unless the parents have set an example for them to follow. Again, Dubner and Levitt have tackled a facet of economics (which no one else has questioned) to contradict an empirical hypothesis and state the actual reason.
Rhetorical Terms:
Statistics: stats on names from various years
Appeal to Logic:the whole book
What do you think are some names that are common for high and low socioeconomic families?
How do names "sound" successful? What are some?
Do you think one's socioeconomic status dictates their success? Why or why not?
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