Socioeconomic mobility in the United States

Raj Chetty... ha[s] pieced together an astonishing series of findings: that absolute mobility (the chance that a child will go on to earn more than their parents) has dropped from 90%, a near certainty, to 50%, a coin-toss; that the gap in life-expectancy between rich and poor has widened even as that between blacks and whites has narrowed; and that although the chances of upward mobility differ greatly from one neighbourhood to the next, in nearly every part of America the path for black boys is steeper.

[13] A 2013 Brookings Institution study found income inequality was increasing and becoming more permanent, sharply reducing social mobility.

In contrast, a majority of European respondents agreed with this view in every country but three (Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia).

These findings have led researchers to conclude that "opportunity structures create and determine future generations' chances for success.

"[25] Economic mobility may be affected by factors such as geographic location,[26][27] education,[28] genetics,[29] culture, race,[30] sex, and interactions among these,[31] as well as family wealth.

[34] Famous instances of great economic and social mobility include Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford.

[4] Additional popular examples of upward social mobility between generations in America include Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton, who were born into working-class families yet achieved high political office in adult life.

Andrew Carnegie arrived in the U.S. as a poor immigrant and rose to become a steel tycoon, perhaps the wealthiest man in America, and its leading philanthropist.

(see graph)[21] Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz contends that "Scandinavian countries changed their education systems, social policies and legal frameworks to create societies where there is a higher degree of mobility.

"[37] According to journalist Jason DeParle, "At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations.

A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults.

[43] Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, asserted in a 2017 report on an investigation of extreme poverty in the United States that "The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion since the US now has the lowest rate of social mobility of any of the rich countries.

A 2007 inequality and mobility study by Wojciech Kopczuk and Emmanuel Saez found the pattern of annual and long-term earnings inequality "very close", and the population at top income levels in America "very stable" and had "not mitigated the dramatic increase in annual earnings concentration since the 1970s.

"[50][51] Economist Paul Krugman complains that conservatives have resorted to "extraordinary series of attempts at statistical distortion" in claiming high levels of mobility.

"[46] Explanations for the relatively low level of social mobility in the US include the better access of affluent children to superior schools and preparation for schools so important in an economy where pay is tilted toward educated workers; high levels of immigration of unskilled laborers and low rate of unionization, which leads to lower wages among the least skilled; public health problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and employment;[4] the sheer size of the income gap between the rich which makes it harder to climb the proverbial income ladder when the rungs are farther apart;[52] poverty, since those with low income have significantly lower rates of mobility than middle and higher income individuals.

For instance, having a four-year college degree makes someone born into the bottom quintile of income three times more likely to climb all the way to the top as an adult.

First, the K through 12 education system is simply not very strong and thus is not an effective way to break the link between parental background and a child’s eventual success.

[58] Despite the increased presence of blacks and women in the work force over the years, women and non-whites hold jobs with less rank, authority, opportunity for advancement and pay than men and whites,[70][71] a "glass ceiling" being said to prevent them from occupying more than a very small percentage in top managerial positions.

Taking a leave from the work force tends to decrease human capital when it comes to finding a job.

[82] Conservatives also question the extent of gender discrimination arguing that competition between firms would lead them to bid up wages of any group if they provided the same or better value of work for less pay as employees.

Borjas found that intergenerational upward economic mobility averaged between a 5% to 10% increase in income from the first to the second generation of immigrants, although there was wide variation among ethnic groups.

[84] In particular, children coming from low-income immigrant families struggle with the disadvantages of their legal status more than the average American due to the level of stress they are exposed to, most specifically through the manner in which they are perceived as well as the way in which they see themselves and their future.

One causing factor is the growing Puerto Rican and Mexican population who have increasingly found their employment niches in these specific sectors.

Historical data shows that the African-American's future advances were highly discounted by scholars like Orley Ashenfelter (1977) and William A. Darity (1982).

Consensus studies conducted in the earlier periods of 1940 through 1960 also led many people to argue that black economic mobility through the route of education was closed.

According to some researchers, America's high incarceration (imprisonment) rate, and "War on Drugs" policies, have created an underclass with severely limited social mobility.

Within the United States the prison population has been steadily increasing since the early 1970s and has now surpassed two million, making it the highest per capita rate in the world.

In addition to the mobility handicaps of imprisonment, this "war" has effectively created a poor, immobile class by denying one of the most important tools for social mobility—education—in a number of ways The lack of education for convicted felons is compounded with difficulties in finding employment.

Significant correlations have been found between intergenerational mobility and economic inequality, economic and racial residential segregation, measures of K-12 school quality (such as test scores and high school dropout rates), social capital indices, and measures of family structure (such as the fraction of single parents in an area)[95] Sociologists Blau and Duncan collected mobility data along with the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1962.

[96] In the 1980s studies found that only 20 percent of the income gap persisted between generations in America, according to the Christian Science Monitor.