This chapter offers some modest suggestions for policies that might begin to revive the fragile American Dream. It also highlights the role that well-being metrics and markers can play in identifying negative beliefs and behaviors before they result in the kinds of desperate outcomes that are described in the book, such as rising mortality rates. It argues that the American Dream is clearly tattered. However, there are signs of hope, and we must find more. Some are in the success stories of programs that seem to work, such as Moving to Opportunity and the earned income tax credit program. Some are in new experiments that show that very simple interventions that provide hope, such as the provision of a modest asset or simply affirmation and a more positive attitude, can make a difference to the subsequent performance of the poor or destitute.
Moving to opportunity, leaving behind what? Evaluating the initial effects of a migration policy on incomes and poverty in source areas*
