An ambitious 25-year social mobility study illustrates the strong effect of children's socioeconomic background in their adult lives. Starting in 1982, researchers kept track of 790 Baltimore first graders from diverse social and economic backgrounds as they matured and entered adulthood. Less than half of the group graduated high school on time. At age 28, more than 10 percent of the black men in the study were incarcerated. A mere 4 percent of the first-graders classified as the “urban disadvantaged” had by the end of the study completed the college degree. Just 33 of 314 raised in the low-income category managed to escape it. The only exception was among low-income white boys, whose inherited job networks facilitated entry into solid blue-collar jobs. They earned higher incomes than other urban disadvantaged despite attaining some of the lowest levels of education.