Intergenerational mobility measures the extent to which people’s economic status is related to their parents’ income level. In the United States, intergenerational mobility is "sticky at both ends," which means that children born to the poorest and richest parents are more likely to remain poor or rich. Those born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution have a 39% chance of remaining there as adults; a similar ratio holds for those born in the top fifth. A new paper by Richard V. Reeves and Kimberly Howard examines the factors that help and hinder mobility from the top and bottom, and shows that both cognitive and non-cognitive skills strongly predict the chances of being in a higher income household as an adult.