I come across a lot of graphs and figures, but Piketty’s education/income graph easily takes the prize as the most impressive in a long time: 

The data is from Chetty et al and I paraphrase Piketty’s penetrating commentary: All societies need a grand narrative to justify their inequalities. In contemporary societies, the focus is on meritocratic narratives, such as: `Modern inequality exists as the outcome of free choice; all individuals have the same opportunities.’ The problem with such narratives is the yawning gap between meritocracy and reality. The graph shows that, in the United States, chances of obtaining higher education are almost entirely determined by the income of one’s parents! Barely 30% for the poorest 10% attend college, while over 90% of kids of the richest 10% attend. (What is worse, we are not even talking about the same educational quality that the richest and poorest receive in college…).

Guess what: Educational experiences of poor and rich families translate directly into inequality: