We are not who we think we are…not by a long shot.
The American self-image is synonymous with streets paved with gold, everyone has an equal chance, work hard and you’ll get ahead, blah, blah. We are told from early on that brains, ambition, and drive will be rewarded rather than the circumstances of your birth.
Not so anymore.
The Economic Mobility Project, funded and led by the Pew Charitable Trusts, examined this very issue in a recent study. The study looked at the economic situations of parents living in the 1960’s compared to how their children are fairing today.
The results were shocking.
Conclusion - the rags to riches story is much more likely to happen in Hollywood than on your local main street. Only 6% of children born in the bottom income bracket move up to the top. Meanwhile, 42% of all children born in poverty, stay there. On the other end, only 6% of all rich kids fall from the top quartile. Movement through the middle has slowed considerably as well.
Parents in the 1960’s had an adjusted median salary of $55,600, while their kids now have a median income of $71,900. However, the cost of living or COLA number has jumped by nearly 15%. Also, 1960’s families were predominantly one income earner households, while households today see both parents working…sometimes more than one job. Median income of white men has been perfectly flat for almost three decades. The total number of homeless as a percentage is at an all time high - 12%, and we are only graduating 70% of our seniors out of high school. You think the 30% who didn’t graduate are headed for the top quartile?
The Economic Mobility Project cannot be labeled biased either. They are made up of a broad cross section of representatives plucked from think tanks from the Brookings Institute, to the Heritage Foundation, to the Urban Institute.
Our notion of America as the Land of Opportunity gets little support from this type of data, and you certainly won’t hear anything close to the truth from the current administration. Four out of ten children who are born poor will stay poor and four out of ten who are born rich will stay rich, and that forty percent of rich kids is growing.
Every candidate for president should be pressed to offer a solution to these problems and at the very least, explain why this is acceptable. However not one of them has, and I dare think not one of them will, for they are all symptomatic of the larger problem.
Sphere: Related Content