Economic mobility in the United States has stayed flat for two decades, neither improving or declining, according to a new paper by Raj Chetty, Emmanuel Saez, and others.
For example, the chance that a child born into the bottom fifth of income distribution will reach the top fifth as an adult was 8.4 percent for those born in 1971 and was still just 9 percent for kids born in 1986. Children born into the middle fifth have had about a 20 percent chance of reaching the top fifth over the last decade.
While the paper disproves the idea that mobility has declined, it still presents a worrying trend. As mobility has stayed stagnant, income inequality has been on the rise, making a child’s starting position even more important. “[T]he consequences of the ‘birth lottery’ – the parents to whom a child is born – are larger today than in the past,” the authors write. If social mobility is a ladder, this means “the rungs of the ladder have grown further apart (inequality has increased), but children’s chances of climbing from lower to higher rungs have not changed.”
American Children's Chances Of Making More Than Their Parents Haven't Improved In Two Decades | ThinkProgress
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