AccountingWEB.com - Apr-19-2006 - Is there any more 'American' story than the immigrant who earns success through hard work, determination and sheer grit? This story is ingrained in the American psyche, but recent research is exploding the myths of the land of opportunity. Perhaps the United States was never a classless society, but it is certainly more rigid today than ever. These days, if you're born into a poor family, you're likely to die poor. If you're born into riches, you'll stay rich. If your parents are middle-class, the chances of ending up on a higher rung of the economic ladder are far smaller than you might think. According to research cited in a new paper written by Alan Berube, a Brookings Institution scholar and metropolitan policy expert, the U.S. is becoming increasingly less socially mobile. Across the 1990s, about 40 percent of U.S. families ended the decade in the same income bracket in which they began, versus 36-37 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. More than half the families at the bottom were still there after 10 years. Several serious examinations of class mobility-or more accurately the lack thereof-are drawing attention to the barriers that hinder movement from one social class to the next. As the divide between the haves and have-nots grows, the more difficult it is to climb from one rung to the next, Berube wrote. He pointed out that in 2004 and 2005, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, have all written series of articles on the subject of whether and how Americans are moving up the ladder. And in the United Kingdom, the issue has taken central stage in the public debate, Berube said in "Overcoming Barriers to Mobility: The Role of Place in the United States and UK."
This story is ingrained in the American psyche, but recent research is exploding the myths of the land of opportunity. Perhaps the United States was never a classless society, but it is certainly more rigid today than ever. These days, if you're born into a poor family, you're likely to die poor. If you're born into riches, you'll stay rich. If your parents are middle-class, the chances of ending up on a higher rung of the economic ladder are far smaller than you might think.
According to research cited in a new paper written by Alan Berube, a Brookings Institution scholar and metropolitan policy expert, the U.S. is becoming increasingly less socially mobile. Across the 1990s, about 40 percent of U.S. families ended the decade in the same income bracket in which they began, versus 36-37 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. More than half the families at the bottom were still there after 10 years.
Several serious examinations of class mobility-or more accurately the lack thereof-are drawing attention to the barriers that hinder movement from one social class to the next. As the divide between the haves and have-nots grows, the more difficult it is to climb from one rung to the next, Berube wrote.
He pointed out that in 2004 and 2005, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, have all written series of articles on the subject of whether and how Americans are moving up the ladder. And in the United Kingdom, the issue has taken central stage in the public debate, Berube said in "Overcoming Barriers to Mobility: The Role of Place in the United States and UK."
