A new report from Stanford University’s Raj Chetty and a team of researchers makes the case that the United States has lost out on a significant amount of scientific, technological, and economic innovation because of income and wealth inequality. Specifically, the report argues that poor, non-white, and female children are underexposed to inventors and innovators in their youth, decreasing the likelihood that they will become inventors themselves. Children from families in the top 1 percent of earners are ten times more likely to become inventors as those from families in the bottom 50 percent, according to the report.
