The Lost Einsteins

To maximize innovation and growth, all of our brightest youth should have the opportunity to become inventors. [..] We concluded that there are many “Lost Einsteins” in America – children who had the ability to innovate, but whose socioeconomic class or gender greatly reduced their ability to tap into the social networks and resources necessary to become inventors. [..]

Using new de-identified data that allows us to track 1.2 million inventors from birth to adulthood, we found that children born to parents in the top 1 percent of the income distribution are 10 times as likely to become inventors as those born to parents in the bottom half. Similarly, white children are three times as likely to become inventors as are black children. Only 18 percent of the youngest generation of inventors are female. Although the gender gap narrows somewhat each year, at the current rate of convergence, we won’t see gender balance until next century.

This is not to say that talent doesn’t play some role in determining who invents in America. In fact, math test scores for students even as young as third grade tell us a great deal about who will innovate. Unsurprisingly, inventors are typically found in the top tiers of math test scores. More concerning is that while high-achieving youth from privileged backgrounds go on to invent at high rates, many comparably talented children from more modest backgrounds do not. Even among the most talented kids, family background is still an important determinant of who grows up to invent [..]

The relative importance of privilege and skills changes as kids get older. And it does so in a way that suggests that differences in educational environment contribute to disparities in patent rates.Near the start of elementary school, we can identify many high-achieving students from less privileged backgrounds. But as these students get older, the difference in test scores between rich and poor become much more pronounced. By high school, youth from less privileged backgrounds who appeared to hold promise as future inventors when they were younger have fallen behind academically. Other recent research suggests that differences in schools and neighborhoods play a large role in this socioeconomic divergence in skills.

If we could somehow get all kids to grow up to invent at the same rate as white boys from America’s wealthiest families – that is, families with an income of $100,000 or more – we would have four times as many inventors in America. So what can be done to keep these “Lost Einsteins” in the pipeline to become innovators?[..]

We need more innovators, more innovation -> more growth, more wealth - to use for social services, etc. But the dependence, the arrow goes in the other direction too, helping the disadvantaged somehow, financially or otherwise will help to reach these untapped innovators generating even more wealth. There is a lot of talk about "the hayday of easy innovation is over". There is a grain of truth to that - using advanced Calculus, physics, knowing the wave equation and multiplexing will get you the radio, but nowadays the landscape is much wider,  more people are needed to cover that ground. We can't simply rely on the children of the 1% - there aren't that many of them, they are only one percent of the population.