Rags to riches? One shot in 100
America's the land of opportunity, right? The rags-to-riches story is a characteristically, perhaps even uniquely, American success story, right?
Uh, not so much:
The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America", a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.By contrast, a child born rich had a 22 percent chance of being rich as an adult, he said.
"In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family," he told an audience at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank sponsoring the work.
He also found the United States had one of the lowest levels of inter-generational mobility in the wealthy world, on a par with Britain but way behind most of Europe.
That's particularly interesting in that Britain, at least in American eyes, always has been seen as far more class-bound, with far less social mobility, than America.
If the research is true, it not only destroys a cherished American myth ("myth" not in the sense of "lie" or "false story," but in the sense of "stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to create and/or maintain national identity"), it also raises some interesting questions for us as a country.
Has this always been the case, or is it a relatively recent development? If recent, what caused it? And whether or not it's a recent development, should we have more social mobility? Why? And if we think we should, what do we need to do to create and maintain it?
I'm no expert. I don't know the answers to any of these questions. (I could make some guesses off the top of my head, but I won't.)
Do you know the answers?
