Big News On Social Mobility

There has been a great deal of emphasis on inequality (including by this author) lately.  A new study questions some major assumptions behind the inequality debate and supports some others.  First the most significant question:

The odds of moving up — or down — the income ladder in the United States have not changed appreciably in the last 20 years, according to a large new academic study that contradicts politicians in both parties who have claimed that income mobility is falling.

But this doesn’t mean that inequality or a lack of social mobility is not a problem.

The new study, based on tens of millions of anonymous tax records, finds that the mobility rate has held largely steady in recent decades, although it remains lower than in Canada and in much of Western Europe, where the odds of escaping poverty are higher.

So in the land of opportunity, you are less likely to escape poverty than in those socialist bastions in Europe.  That’s not the way it is supposed to be.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.