Dumb luck, nurturing, hard work: how class does not always dictate fate

Life Chances study participant Anna Lam is now a primary school teacher at Coburg North Primary School. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The GuardianIn 1990, the Brotherhood of St Laurence began a study in the inner-city Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy. Life Chances has echoes of the British Seven Up series, which has documented the lives of 14 people every seven years since the early 1960s.The heart of both projects is class. Life Chances began with 167 babies born to wealthy parent