Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way [Hardcover]

Lisa A. Keister (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521829704 | ISBN-13: 978-0521829700 | Publication Date: June 13, 2005

Although the basic facts about wealth inequality are no longer a mystery, we still know very little about who the wealthy are, how they got there, and what prevents other people from becoming rich. That is, we know very little about the process of wealth mobility. This book investigates some of the most basic questions about wealth mobility. The advantages of owning wealth and the elusive nature of true wealth have long made questions about the wealthy broadly appealing. In recent years, that interest has been amplified by dramatic economic changes and rising wealth inequality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book constitutes a major contribution to the field of household wealth and wealth mobility. It is filled with new and intriguing findings on what it takes to become rich in America. Well written and accessible, it should appeal to a wide audience both in the United States and abroad.” -- Edward Wolff, New York University

“Lisa Keister has produced a magnificently comprehensive examination of wealth attainment and mobility in the contemporary United States, including historical comparisons to the wealth processes in the early twentieth century. She attends to critical issues of how ethnicity, religion, and gender influence wealth attainment and mobility, and she assesses theories of wealth attainment and mobility using several high quality data sources. Keister's work on the accumulation of fortunes provides a lucid and provocative compliment to Williams Julius Wilson's The Truly Disadvantaged.” -- Darren E. Sherkat, Southern Illinois University

Book Description

Although basic facts about wealth inequality are no longer a mystery, we still know very little about who the wealthy are, how they got there, and what prevents other people from becoming rich. That is, we know very little about the process of wealth mobility. This book explores wealth by investigating some of the most basic questions about wealth mobility. How much mobility is there? Has the nature of mobility changed over time? Is entrepreneurship important? How much does inheritance matter? What other factors encourage or prevent wealth mobility, and how do these change over the course of a person's life?

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 324 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521829704
• ISBN-13: 978-0521829700
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,693,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important issue well analyzed, September 7, 2008

By 

Craig B. Little "CB" (Cortland, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way (Paperback)

The person who ranked this a "1" obviously was looking for a "self-help" or "how to" book which this is not. It IS an excellent analysis of how America's new rich got that way--exactly what the subtitle says. The author's conclusions show that there is some--but not a lot--of wealth mobility in America (but enough to justify her research on the topic which otherwise would merely conclude that wealth is overwhelmingly inherited) and that educational attainment and religion (perhaps to the extent that a education is fundamentally valued by a religious group) are important factors in "getting rich." The book avoids the trap of conclusion by anecdote (e.g., Well, Bill Gates dropped out of college, so education must not matter) by examining the FACTS across all of American society. This is the book for you if you want to know who in America succeeds in getting rich and why. If you want "snake-oil" get-rich-quick "secrets," look elsewhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good analysis of causes of wealth mobility in the United States, June 13, 2011

By 

Munro C. Richardson (Kansas City, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way (Hardcover)

This is a very well conceived and executed empirical study of wealth mobility in the United States. In this academic volume, Lisa Keister, a sociology professor at Duke University, studies the determinates of wealth accumulation. The author uses twenty-year longitudinal data to investigate why some people become wealthy while others do not. Some results of this study track with conventional wisdom, e.g. adults with relatively high wealth tend to have parents with higher education. The author also finds a negative relationship between family size and adult wealth accumulation. (This tracks with Dalton Conley's findings in The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look at How Family and Society Determine Who We Become.)

Probably the most interesting finding for the general public concerns the relationship between entrepreneurship and wealth creation. Keister finds starting a business is a key avenue for many people to "get rich." Conventional wisdom is that it takes money to make money. In other words, how much money you have in the first place (or perhaps can get from your family) in order to start a business to "get rich" makes a big difference. Keister, however, blows a hole through this excuse. Not only does she find that one's prior level of wealth apparently has no causal effect on whether one starts a business, but that family income is not determinate either. The data do not appear to discriminate between types of businesses, so one could argue that prior wealth might affect business size or success. Amar Bhide in The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, however, finds that most of the founders of Inc. 500 companies bootstrapped their companies, with a quarter of them starting with less than $5,000 and nearly half less than $50,000. Let's hope that the door to wealth creation in America through entrepreneurship remains open.

2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars $70!, October 13, 2007

By 

Bruce M. Wilhelm "wvgardener" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Rich: America's New Rich and How They Got That Way (Hardcover)

The only one getting richer from this book is the author!! Put the money in a mutual fund!