"Just How Nepotistic Are We?"

"I studied the probability of male baby boomers’ reaching the same level of success as their fathers. I had to limit myself to fathers and sons because this was a highly sexist period in which women held few powerful political positions...

I went through a wide range of fields and found a consistent pattern: greater success for the sons, but nothing like the edge a winning politician provides.

Here is the estimated parental edge for other big American prizes and positions. An American male is 4,582 times more likely to become an Army general if his father was one; 1,895 times more likely to become a famous C.E.O.; 1,639 times more likely to win a Pulitzer Prize; 1,497 times more likely to win a Grammy; and 1,361 times more likely to win an Academy Award. Those are pretty decent odds, but they do not come close to the 8,500 times more likely a senator’s son is to find himself chatting with John McCain or Dianne Feinstein in the Senate cloakroom."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-just-how-nepotistic-are-we.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0&referrer=

Like, obviously, political success is just an extremely heritable trait. Clearly.

It's weird, this is sort of something we know but also it's not usually put in these terms.