The United States Is No Longer a Land of Upward Mobility and Opportunity

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-135
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Adult Children ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Better Than

Chapter 16 explores the extent of economic mobility in the United States compared with other industrialized countries. The amount of relative intergenerational mobility as measured by the intergenerational elasticity statistic is lower in the United States than in most other OECD countries. Furthermore, the extent to which adult children are earning more than their parents has been declining over the past 50 years. The American dream of each generation doing economically better than the previous generation is becoming harder to achieve. We are a society in which the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown further apart, resulting in greater numbers of Americans struggling and falling further behind.

Vive la différence? Intergenerational Mobility in France and the United States during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Bourdieu ◽  
Joseph P. Ferrie ◽  
Lionel Kesztenbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Europe Today

Although rates of intergenerational mobility are the same in the United States and Europe today, attitudes toward redistribution, which should reflect those rates—at least in part—differ substantially. An examination of the differences in mobility between the United States and France since the middle of the nineteenth century, based on data for both countries that permit a comparison between the socioeconomic status of fathers and that of sons throughout a period of thirty years, demonstrates that the United States was a considerably more mobile economy in the past, though such differences are far from apparent today.

Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants in the United States over Two Centuries

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (2) ◽  
pp. 580-608
Author(s):  
Ran Abramitzky ◽  
Leah Boustan ◽  
Elisa Jácome ◽  
Santiago Pérez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Children Of Immigrants ◽  
Us History ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Immigration

Using millions of father-son pairs spanning more than 100 years of US history, we find that children of immigrants from nearly every sending country have higher rates of upward mobility than children of the US-born. Immigrants’ advantage is similar historically and today despite dramatic shifts in sending countries and US immigration policy. Immigrants achieve this advantage in part by choosing to settle in locations that offer better prospects for their children. (JEL J15, J18, J62, K37, N31, N32)

scholarly journals Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States *

2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 1553-1623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raj Chetty ◽  
Nathaniel Hendren ◽  
Patrick Kline ◽  
Emmanuel Saez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
National Level ◽  
National Income ◽  
High Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
San Jose

Abstract We use administrative records on the incomes of more than 40 million children and their parents to describe three features of intergenerational mobility in the United States. First, we characterize the joint distribution of parent and child income at the national level. The conditional expectation of child income given parent income is linear in percentile ranks. On average, a 10 percentile increase in parent income is associated with a 3.4 percentile increase in a child’s income. Second, intergenerational mobility varies substantially across areas within the United States. For example, the probability that a child reaches the top quintile of the national income distribution starting from a family in the bottom quintile is 4.4% in Charlotte but 12.9% in San Jose. Third, we explore the factors correlated with upward mobility. High mobility areas have (i) less residential segregation, (ii) less income inequality, (iii) better primary schools, (iv) greater social capital, and (v) greater family stability. Although our descriptive analysis does not identify the causal mechanisms that determine upward mobility, the publicly available statistics on intergenerational mobility developed here can facilitate research on such mechanisms.

Is the United States Still a Land of Opportunity? Recent Trends in Intergenerational Mobility

2014 ◽  
Vol 104 (5) ◽  
pp. 141-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raj Chetty ◽  
Nathaniel Hendren ◽  
Patrick Kline ◽  
Emmanuel Saez ◽  
Nicholas Turner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Transition Probabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Percentile Rank ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Evidence

We present new evidence on trends in intergenerational mobility in the United States using administrative earnings records. We find that percentile rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility have remained extremely stable for the 1971-1993 birth cohorts. For children born between 1971 and 1986, we measure intergenerational mobility based on the correlation between parent and child income percentile ranks. For more recent cohorts, we measure mobility as the correlation between a child's probability of attending college and her parents' income rank. We also calculate transition probabilities, such as a child's chances of reaching the top quintile of the income distribution starting from the bottom quintile. Based on all of these measures, we find that children entering the labor market today have the same chances of moving up in the income distribution (relative to their parents) as children born in the 1970s. However, because inequality has risen, the consequences of the “birth lottery” - the parents to whom a child is born - are larger today than in the past.

scholarly journals The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsey Stevenson ◽  
Justin Wolfers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Objective Measures ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
The Past

The lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years by many objective measures, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. This decline in relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, demographic groups, and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men. (JEL I31, J16, J28)

scholarly journals Long-term decline in intergenerational mobility in the United States since the 1850s

2019 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xi Song ◽  
Catherine G. Massey ◽  
Karen A. Rolf ◽  
Joseph P. Ferrie ◽  
Jonathan L. Rothbaum ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Relative Stability ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
High Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Term Trends

We make use of newly available data that include roughly 5 million linked household and population records from 1850 to 2015 to document long-term trends in intergenerational social mobility in the United States. Intergenerational mobility declined substantially over the past 150 y, but more slowly than previously thought. Intergenerational occupational rank–rank correlations increased from less than 0.17 to as high as 0.32, but most of this change occurred to Americans born before 1900. After controlling for the relatively high mobility of persons from farm origins, we find that intergenerational social mobility has been remarkably stable. In contrast with relative stability in rank-based measures of mobility, absolute mobility for the nonfarm population—the fraction of offspring whose occupational ranks are higher than those of their parents—increased for birth cohorts born prior to 1900 and has fallen for those born after 1940.

America’s Poor Are Worse Off Than Elsewhere

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-81
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
Living Wage ◽  
Median Income ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
The Past

Chapter 10 examines the difficulty of living in poverty in the United States. Using the MIT living wage calculator, families in poverty are unable to meet monthly expenses. Furthermore, the distance between the poverty line and median income in the United States has been growing for the past 50 years. When compared with other OECD countries, the United States has higher rates of poverty and more severe levels of poverty. A major reason for this is the relatively weak social safety net found in the United States. In addition, the extent of social exclusion and deprivation is likely higher in the United States as a result of the considerable stigma attached to poverty.

Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine: Three Techniques for Institutionalization

1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun-Ki Chai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Product ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Defense Expenditure

Japan's level of defense expenditure relative to the size of its economy has long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries. As of 1995, Japan's expenditures stood at 0.96 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Even adding to this the approximately 0.3 percent of GDP devoted to pensions for retired personnel, the level of spending is considerably less than that of major Western states such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany, as well as industrialized Asian states such as South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Furthermore, these relative magnitudes have remained reasonably stable over the past few decades.

International Research and Variation in Views of Ethnicity

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Ella Inglebret ◽  
Amy Skinder-Meredith ◽  
Shana Bailey ◽  
Carla Jones ◽  
Ashley France
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Classification System ◽  
International Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Research Participants ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Scale ◽  
Publication Patterns

The authors in this article first identify the extent to which research articles published in three American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) journals included participants, age birth to 18 years, from international backgrounds (i.e., residence outside of the United States), and go on to describe associated publication patterns over the past 12 years. These patterns then provide a context for examining variation in the conceptualization of ethnicity on an international scale. Further, the authors examine terminology and categories used by 11 countries where research participants resided. Each country uses a unique classification system. Thus, it can be expected that descriptions of the ethnic characteristics of international participants involved in research published in ASHA journal articles will widely vary.

Proportion of Individuals With Past-Year Suicidal Ideation Who Attempted Suicide Over the Past 10 Years in the United States, and the Influence of Age and Sex

Crisis ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Shannon Lange ◽  
Courtney Bagge ◽  
Charlotte Probst ◽  
Jürgen Rehm
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Suicidal Ideation ◽  
Random Effects ◽  
Attempted Suicide ◽  
Suicide Attempts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Age Category

Abstract. Background: In recent years, the rate of death by suicide has been increasing disproportionately among females and young adults in the United States. Presumably this trend has been mirrored by the proportion of individuals with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. Aim: We aimed to investigate whether the proportion of individuals in the United States with suicidal ideation who attempted suicide differed by age and/or sex, and whether this proportion has increased over time. Method: Individual-level data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 2008–2017, were used to estimate the year-, age category-, and sex-specific proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide. We then determined whether this proportion differed by age category, sex, and across years using random-effects meta-regression. Overall, age category- and sex-specific proportions across survey years were estimated using random-effects meta-analyses. Results: Although the proportion was found to be significantly higher among females and those aged 18–25 years, it had not significantly increased over the past 10 years. Limitations: Data were self-reported and restricted to past-year suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Conclusion: The increase in the death by suicide rate in the United States over the past 10 years was not mirrored by the proportion of individuals with past-year suicidal ideation who attempted suicide during this period.

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