No Decline in Upward Mobility
T
he odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, according to a large new academic study…
The study found, for instance, that about 8 percent of children born in the early 1980s who grew up in families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution managed to reach the top fifth for their age group today. The rate was nearly identical for children born a decade earlier.
Among children born into the middle fifth of the income distribution, about 20 percent climbed into the top fifth as adults, also largely unchanged over the last decade. (NYT)
There is growing concern about inequity in the United States. Purportedly, democracies cannot long survive the coexistence of billionaires along side people earning $7.15 per hour. Yet, one fact remains is that poor people living abroad want to come to American. They’re undoubtedly not coming for the welfare benefits — they’re coming for the opportunities. When people from all over the world think leaving their own culture and coming here (often with few skills) is step up, this suggests income mobility and opportunity is greater than many people think.
Good point Devon. We find in our community, many
immigrant laborers who are ready and willing to do the menial jobs most native born Americans are not.
The standard of living here is still head and shoulders above what they are used to back home.
Indeed it is
Republicans deserve to lose if they cannot get out there and defeat this ridiculous inequality argument. The president can talk about unfairness and inequality all he wants, but the facts paint a very different picture. Hopefully people will start to see that.
It’s tough, the information needs to become wildly available and known before that can happen
What I find interesting is that they compared mobility in different cities, and concluded that there is a lot of variance. In some cities, mobility is greater than abroad (e.g. Denmark) and in other cities it is worse.
It would be interesting to regress this finding against the size of government, poverty industry, Medicaid eligibility, etc. in the cities.
I also am impressed by the optimism of describing upward mobility. Surely it is the opposite of downward mobility! That is, if people are moving up percentiles in the distribution, there must be others moving down (relatively).
“The level of opportunity is alarming, even though it’s stable over time,”
Welcome to America
The land of opportunity, not wealth. Many people think that the wealth is handed to them
Shhh don’t tell that to the democrats.
“For all the continuity over recent decades, the authors emphasized that parents appeared to cast a longer shadow over their children’s lives, in some ways, than before. As inequality has risen, pushing the rungs on the income ladder further apart than they once were, the average economic penalty of being born poor has grown over time.”
Breaking away from your parents can be difficult. If schools helped students propel themselves beyond their normal circumstance we could see an even bigger climb up the income ladder.
These kids need a better path paved for them
They need to pave their own path, but the teachers will help guide them.
“The problem is that alongside increased inequality, we’ve seen diminished levels of upward mobility in recent years.” Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a Republican vice-presidential nominee, argued in a speech at the Brookings Institution last week that a smarter, smaller government would allow the country to “get back to those days of upward mobility.”
Ignorance on both sides of the fence.
It could be just misinformation.
That seems to happen a lot with politicians.