Maybe it’s the neighborhood. Fairly affluent kids don’t really appreciate things. Of course there’s also the little thugs coming over from the apartment buildings 1/2 mile or so away.
Is that really a conservative point of view? I'm in a pretty upscale community and every child here is polite, within the usual limits for kids of a particular age group. The mini-thugs from the next neighborhood sometimes need to be reminded to say please and thank you, but generally they too have been kind and there have been many smiles.
I think that more than the degree of affluence in a household, the degree of faith is what determines whether a child will be nice or not.