Really what you are talking about is ambition. I think ambition is a combination of innate personality and environment/nuturing.
This may also be a matter of relative achievement. Success doesn’t grow exponentially. If your family has very little, you have more room to move up. If your parents are high school drop-outs and work in menial jobs, all you have to do outshine them is stay in school longer. If you stick it through college, you’ve jumped even farther. So by comparison, just about anything you do short of dropping out of high school before your parents did will make you look like a success story.
But if your parents are professionals and well-to-do, outshining them is harder to do. Your chances of looking “mediocre” are much greater. It’s hard for anyone to become a doctor or a lawyer. If you flunk out of pre-med and can’t pass the bar exam and decide to become a kindergarten teacher, you’re going to look like a failure. Even though you aren’t. You’re just–in the words of Theo Huxtable–a “regular” person!
I think ambition is probably evenly distributed across different classes and groups. It’s manifestation may be influenced by culture/environment, but I don’t think it’s generated out of it completely. That said, I think that being on the “edge” makes you afraid of falling off of it. Fear is a great motivator. If you know losing a scholarship due to bad grades will put a kibosh on the whole college thing (and you really want to be in college), then you’re going to work your ass off not to be anywhere close to failing. That diligence can become engrained in you and stay with you for a long time.
I don’t think it’s the presence of help that makes the difference. Its fear. The fear of not succeeding.
People who are hard workers–regardless of SES background–often work hard because they don’t take it for granted that everything will be all right regardless. They are motivated because deep down inside, they are afraid of getting a bad grade, not getting a job, getting fired or demoted, losing their house, and being poor and desperate.
People who are more lazy when it comes to work typically don’t have the worse case scenario playing in the back of their mind at all times.
While I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of people with meager upbringings work hard and achieve success out of desire to create as much distance between themselves and their old friend poverty, a lot of poor people aren’t motivated like that. They are either resigned to their situation, feel helpless to do anything about it because it seems impossible, or choose to live in the moment rather than delay gratification.
Affluent people are subject to variability too. Sure, many of them are slackers because they know that if they screw up, help is on the way regardless. But others work hard because they have a standard to live up to and don’t want to disappoint themselves or others.
OTOH, too much fear can lead to not taking chances on trying things you might not be able to do. I was in above-average but not honors classes in high school, because I was so terrified of failing in honors classes. I probably didn’t achieve as much as I could have, because I was too afraid of failing.
I can see how this kind of fear can be shaped by socioeconomic status in different ways.
If you’re poor and show the slightest bit of ability, people will push you to succeed and hold you up as a role model and dream-catcher. If you fail, it won’t be just your failure, but the failure of everyone who’s living vicariously through you. So you better not fail! Also, you know what happens to people who fail. You see life’s losers all the time and they depress the hell out of you. Sure, you’ll have plenty of company if you do fail, but it won’t be fun company.
If you’re from a rich family, people will also push you to succeed, because success is your birthright. Your success reflects on your family’s worth. If you fail, you’ll shame the family’s name. What will people say if you can’t follow in your father’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s shoes by becoming a hot-shot lawyer? Sure, you’ll never have to worry about going hungry, regardless of what you do. But do you really want to be the family loser? No! So you better not fail!