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Opposites Don’t Attract: Assortative Mating and Social Mobility
Americans love a good Cinderella story… except when it comes to their own marriages. It turns out that if Cinderella had been born in modern-day America, she would be much more likely to marry the...
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How to Save Marriage in America
What’s happening to American matrimony? In 1960, more than 70 percent of all adults were married, including nearly six in ten twentysomethings. Half a century later, just 20 percent of 18-29-year olds...
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HIP (High Investment Parenting) Marriages Are the Future
The marriage gap by social class is a source of anxiety, since it contributes to inequality – and to inequality of opportunity, too. Kids raised by married parents do better on all fronts. But it’s...
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1% v. 99%? No, It's Affluent, Squeezed, and Entrenched Poverty
The inequality debate is dominated by binary thinking. Scholars typically worry about the gap between rich and poor, the “haves” and “have nots” or – most recently – between “the 99% and the 1%.”...
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Obama’s Post-Presidency? Tackling the Social Mobility Challenge for Black Men
President Obama’s initiative to boost opportunities for young black men – My Brother’s Keeper – looks to be a post-presidential plan, as much as presidential one. Valerie Jarrett, his closest aide,...
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Independence, not "Inclusion," is the Goal of Public Policy
In the 1990s, European policy wonks starting using the label "social exclusion" as a more sophisticated alternative to "poverty" or "disadvantage." The goal of policy, relatedly, became the promotion...
View ArticleIndependence Not Inclusion: A liberal approach to disadvantage
Liberals, conservatives and social democrats can all agree the provision of extra support for severely disadvantaged groups makes fiscal sense. But the different political traditions will bring...
View ArticleSocial Mobility and The Son Also Rises: The Good
Social mobility rates today are no better than in the era of Downton Abbey, or, in fact, the Middle Ages. And that’s true, according to Greg Clark, author of The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the...
View ArticleSocial Mobility and The Son Also Rises: The Bad
Greg Clark applies an innovative technique – analysis of surnames – to argue that social mobility is slow and consistent, both across continents and generations. “Mobility is consistent across...
View ArticleSocial Mobility and The Son Also Rises: The Ugly
See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series on Gregory Clark’s book “The Son Also Rises.”Greg Clark suggests that while mobility is very low, the world is “a much fairer place than we intuit.” How can this...
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Character Gaps and Social Mobility
Social mobility is influenced by a kaleidoscopic array of economic, social, education and individual factors—including character strengths. James Heckman’s pioneering work has opened up a new field of...
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Is It Time for K-16?
The educational conveyor belt has stalled in the U.S.—at least for low-income children, argue Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane in their new book, Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the...
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Character Gaps and Social Mobility, Part 2
Character strengths, including “grit” or motivation, matter for life outcomes – and may also be influenced by family income background (see this post from earlier this week).Our new project comes at...
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Who Cares About Winston Marshall? Voluntary Downward Mobility
Social mobility is usually measured in terms of income, and how affluence and poverty are imprinted from one generation onto the next. But of course social mobility is about more than money. It’s about...
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Women and Social Mobility: Six Key Facts
Social mobility is moving up the political agenda, but in a fairly masculine fashion. Much of the intergenerational data relies on father-son comparisons; a disproportionate number of the “rags to...
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Measuring the Racial Opportunity Gap
The U.S. is sharply divided by race, not least in terms of the opportunities for children—a point this week’s report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation vividly shows. At every life stage, there are...
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Lit Review: Scarcity and Character
How do circumstances and character interact? Parents and teachers work to instill character strengths in children because they have a role in shaping circumstances. (For a comprehensive summary, see...
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Vague Hopes and Active Aspirations, Part 1
Skills—cognitive and non-cognitive—provide us with what James Heckman calls the “capacities to act.” But we need reasons to act, too. That is why JFK, in a 1963 speech on civil rights, insisted: “every...
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Vague Hopes and Active Aspirations, Part 2
Why do some people have lower active aspirations (as opposed to vague hopes) than others?Four broad possible explanations:I Don’t Want It. A person might decide entirely autonomously that the accepted...
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Visitors to the Top 1%
The soar-away incomes of the top 1 per cent have grabbed plenty of attention in recent years, from the banners of the Occupy movement to the pages of Thomas Piketty’s Capital. The growing gap between...
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