An Independent Economics Research Project
Can hard work alone change your economic future?
Wealth Mobility Lab is an interactive research platform exploring how birthplace, education, and policy shape who climbs the income ladder — and who stays put. Explore, compare, and question the data yourself.
By Vibhav Goel · Delhi Public School Sector 45, Gurgaon
The scale of the question
A gap that begins at birth — and rarely closes
Across 30 countries, the data tells one consistent story: where a child is born strongly predicts where they end up. These numbers frame the rest of this project.
0.0
Average Gini across 30 countries
0
Gini gap between most and least equal nations
0
Mobility-index gap between top and bottom nations
The core question
Does where you're born determine your economic future?
This is not a single statistic. It is a chain of links — birthplace, schooling, health, housing, taxes — each nudging a person up or down the ladder.
Birth sets the starting line
A child born in Norway and a child born in South Africa face income distributions that barely overlap. The ladder begins at very different heights.
Education widens or narrows the gap
Countries that invest heavily in public education — like Finland and Germany — see more children from low-income homes reach university.
Policy decides whether the ladder has rungs
Progressive taxes, scholarships, and housing support are the rungs. Without them, effort alone rarely overcomes the starting point.
Mobility is measurable — and it varies enormously
The Great Gatsby Curve shows that more unequal societies tend to be less mobile. Inequality in one generation becomes immobility in the next.
Explore the lab
Six ways to investigate the question
Each section of this project answers a different angle of the same question. Move between them in any order — curiosity, not sequence, is the point.
"The question is not whether we can grow the economy, but whether the gains reach the people who need them most."
— The guiding question of this project