Horatio Alger doesn’t live here anymore

[flashl]

Land of Broken Dreams

We’re not who we think we are.

The American self-image is suffused with the golden glow of opportunity. We think of the United States as a land of unlimited possibility, not so much a classless society but as a place where class is mutable—a place where brains, energy and ambition are what counts, not the circumstances of one’s birth. But three important new studies suggest that Horatio Alger doesn’t live here anymore.

The Economic Mobility Project, an ambitious research initiative led by the Pew Charitable Trusts, looked at the economic fortunes of a large group of families over time, comparing the income of parents in the late 1960s with the income of their children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here’s the finding that jumps out at me:

“The ‘rags to riches’ story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top.”

That’s right, just 6 percent of children born to parents who ranked in the bottom fifth of the study sample, in terms of income, were able to bootstrap their way into the top fifth. Meanwhile, an incredible 42 percent of children born into that lowest quintile are still stuck at the bottom, having been unable to climb a single rung of the income ladder.

The study notes that even in Britain—a nation we think of as burdened with a hidebound, anachronistic class system—children who are born poor have a better chance of moving up.

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Some of us did not need Pew Trust to tell us the "dream" was just that a "dream".

[TexasLawyer]

1. and there are a lot of "riches to rags" stories out there too

[flashl]

2. Thats the truth. n/t