Speaker: Pat Hastings (with Zachary Parolin)

Institution: Colorado State University

Date: 14:00 BST, 23rd July 2026

Talk Title: Rags or Riches? Predicting Life Outcomes from the Birth Lottery Across Five High-Income Countries

Abstract: Stratification in life outcomes is a central concern of sociology, but to what extent can adult outcomes be predicted from childhood circumstances? Although decades of research have identified important family and socioeconomic factors associated with mobility and attainment, these models explain only a modest share of individual variation in outcomes. Using harmonized longitudinal data from the Cross-National Equivalent Files (CNEF) and an ensemble of machine-learning models applied to a common set of childhood characteristics, we estimate the predictability of adult outcomes in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and South Korea. Predictability varies substantially across outcomes and national contexts: educational attainment is the most predictable in general, poverty is far more predictable in the U.S. than other countries, and income mobility is substantially less predictable than overall attainment outcomes. In additional analyses with the U.S., adding more variables including race, wealth, and parental incarceration improves predictions only slightly. We further show that predictability captures a distinct dimension of stratification that is not fully captured in other traditional measures of mobility, inequality, and opportunity. Together, these findings provide new insights into where and how the birth lottery most strongly shapes life chances.

Bio: Pat Hastings is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. He studies parenting, childhood, inequality, and social mobility with quantitative and computational methods.