The subject of upward mobility in America will be a prominent topic in the upcoming presidential campaign, and it’s important the debate is grounded in hard fact, and not hostage to the kind of rhetoric that arouses passions and causes people to lose objectivity.
Thankfully, a trove of new data is available through a landmark study by economists at Harvard University, and it offers needed clarity in what is a deeply complex issue. The Equality of Opportunity Project involved the tracking of millions of families over a period of years and uncovered a direct link between a child’s future earnings and the specific place where he or she grew up. In short, some neighborhoods are conducive to upward mobility while others, for a variety of reasons, are not.
At first blush, the findings beg the obvious. We know there are places where intergenerational poverty festers, but the study breaks down the ingredients that create pockets of limited mobility and offers a template for reforms that could effectively address the problem. The data demonstrate that where children are raised is a bigger factor than their race or ethnic background, which diverts the debate away from one about racial equality.
The researchers found common denominators in neighborhoods where kids are afforded a brighter future, including more effective elementary school education as measured by test scores, a larger proportion of two-parent households, greater levels of community involvement by civic and religious groups and a more even mix of wealthy, middle class and poorer families in the residential population.
Parenthetically, it is heartening to see that Salt Lake City ranks in the study as among the top three metropolitan areas for potential mobility, along with Seattle and Minneapolis.
A lead researcher in the project, Raj Chetty, has delivered the data to President Obama as well as to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, who both say mobility will be a high-profile issue in their presidential campaigns. As Chetty told the New York Times, “the data shows we can do something about upward mobility. Every extra year of childhood spent in a better neighborhood seems to matter.”
The research would clearly point to specific policy directions. Investment in elementary education is one. Another is to encourage the involvement of business and civic organizations in community development. The influence of religious organizations and the stability of two-parent families are also singled out as key ingredients in the fermentation of greater opportunity. But a compelling part of the study speaks to the value of integrating people of mixed affluence in a given community.
Interestingly, the study ranks the city of Baltimore near the bottom in opportunity for upward mobility. Baltimore has become a focal point in the equality and mobility debate after a period of civil unrest tied to the death of a man in police custody. The Harvard study suggests the lack of social mobility is most pronounced in neighborhoods, like some in Baltimore, where residents have come to regard themselves as part of a permanent underclass.
It stands to reason that policies that encourage development of affordable housing to bring people of lower income status into residential proximity with those of greater affluence would help break that cycle. A city in which neighborhoods are segregated along lines of relative wealth is not a healthy city. And while race is a factor, it is not the determining factor. The data shows that white children living in a predominantly black neighborhood with high levels of poverty are no more likely to escape from the cycle as anyone else.
Importantly, the research also shows that inequality of opportunity is more of a local problem than one that needs massive federal intervention. Solutions will only come from communities where residents are committed to creating an environment in which the doors of opportunity are open to all of their neighbors.