Parenting matters much more than parental income.

A marvelously brief summary of the state of play as to child development and life outcomes from Skills and Scaffolding by Nobel laureate James Heckman.

His list of what we know (and my translations in brackets):

1. Character skills matter at least as much as cognitive skills.
2. Important skills are not innate "traits" solely acquired by genetic inheritance.
3. For skill development, timing matters. (There are periods in their development when children are especially amenable to trait acquisition)
4. The early years are the most effective period for investments in both cognitive and non-cognitive skills.
5. Successful adolescent interventions largely operate through promoting character skills.
6. Skills beget skills. (The Goldilocks effect/the Matthew Effect. There is a cascading effect on early skill acquisition)
7. The development of skills takes place within a vital "scaffolding." (You have to modulate delivery to what a child is able to absorb)
8. Credit constraints are not very important.

The last item is probably worth quoting in full as it is a hoary standby for all SJWs. The belief that income determines outcomes (as opposed to parenting practices) is one of those seductively logical assumptions that is so appealing that people rarely look at the actual evidence. In addition, it plays to the near universal inability to distinguish between correlation and causation.

8. Credit constraints are not very important. There is a strong empirical relationship between educational attainment and parental income. However, parental income is a proxy for many attributes of the parental environment. The causal evidence of an importance role for credit constraints is weak. Parenting matters much more than parental income.