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May 22, 2026 / 12:06 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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Homeownership has long been seen as a cornerstone of the American Dream because it reliably builds wealth. But new research suggests your chances of ever acquiring a home may depend partly on something beyond your control: your parents' wealth.To examine the factors that influence what economists refer to as "wealth mobility," researchers from the U.S. Census Bureau and Carnegie Mellon University analyzed IRS tax records, Census data and property ownership records for 3.4 million families. The analysis then tracked the children born to those families — kids born between 1978 and 1986, or the youngest Gen Xers and youngest millennials — and whether they were able to buy a home between 2019 and 2021, when they were between 34 and 42 years old.The bank of mom and dadA key finding was that homeownership depends more on parental wealth than adult income, especially in expensive housing markets. Even people who significantly increase their income over their careers are less likely to own a home if their parents were renters than those with homeowner parents."Even if children grow up to earn about the same amount as adults, those with wealthier parents have higher homeownership rates and more valuable homes when they do own homes," Max Risch, one of the paper's co-authors and an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, told CBS News.He added, "The opportunity to achieve this American dream is more dependent on how wealthy your parents are than we might like."Economists have long focused on income mobility, including influential work by Harvard economist Raj Chetty, but wealth mobility has received less attention, Risch said. The new research suggests income mobility alone does not fully explain economic outcomes because wealth — which tends to persist across generations — shapes opportunities in ways earnings alone may not.
