Upward Mobility Downturn
Happens to coincide with the Great Society, War on Poverty, etc. Imagine that. The social scientists don’t seem to have quite figured it out yet, though. Boston Herald:
“Evidence suggests that over the 1967-to-2004 time span, a low-income family’s probability of moving up decreased, families’ (future) income increasing depended on their starting place and the distribution of families’ lifetime incomes became less equal,” Federal Reserve economists Katharine Bradbury and Jane Katz wrote in the new report.
Analyzing some 3,500 American families’ household incomes between 1967 and 2004, the latest period with data available, the pair found that:
Just 46 percent of America’s poorest people improved their circumstances between 1993 and 2003, vs. 57 percent who managed to better their lots between 1974 and 1984;
Poor families made just 53 percent of median U.S. income in 1994-2004, down from 60 percent in 1967-1977;
Only 31 percent of extremely poor blacks vs. 58 percent of very poor whites moved up the ladder between 1993 and 2003. Both did worse than in 1968-1978, when 61 percent of extremely poor whites and 33 percent of very poor blacks improved their incomes.
“What we seem to be seeing is that overall mobility is declining, and that people who start near the bottom are increasingly stuck,” Bradbury told the Herald. “Smaller fractions of people were (better off) at the end of the latest period than they were 30 years ago.”
…
The two experts’ study doesn’t explain why upward mobility has fallen since the 1960s - Bradbury and Katz are researching that subject now.
Now, some people will tell you that’s because we became hardhearted greedheads. I don’t think so. We have a long history in this country of people wanting money, and doing what they had to do to get it, and improving their lot in the process. The rising tide floats all boats.
I think it has more to do with us becoming softheaded bleeding hearts.
OK, here’s my theory. LBJ’s Great Society and the resulting Welfare State was introduced immediately prior o the period in question. Viewed charitably, it might have given people a brief shot in the arm, then dependency set in. It was all downhill from there.
The graphic, though a tad vague, shows a bit of a resurgence that suspiciously seems to coincide with the Reagan years, when government sensibly spent lots of money on things that actually produce jobs … missiles, tanks, ships, etc., to drive the communist menace into its grave. And the other good news is, the Republican effort in the 1990s to kill the Welfare State, a bandwagon Bill Clinton jumped on, seems to have helped:
… the pair have found one bright spot: Some evidence hints that mobility declines have either slowed or stopped in recent years.
For instance, Bradbury and Katz discovered that just 2 percent of U.S. families fell into extreme poverty between 1993 and 2003. That’s essentially unchanged from 1968-1978.
And while the gap between blacks’ and whites’ upward mobility didn’t get any better between 1968-1978 and 1993-2003, it didn’t get any worse, either.
“I wouldn’t say that the American Dream of upward mobility has disappeared,” Bradbury said. “It just seems like these measures suggest it’s operating a little less well than it used to.”
Yeah yeah yeah, I know, economic factor this, industrial factor that, deregulation whatever. Everyone’s going to have a theory. That’s mine and I’m sticking with it.
OK, envelope to the forehead … the Great Crittendino predicts that with the unprecedented Obama throwaway of money and resulting massive national debt — possibly about to be compounded by further incentives for people to rely on government rather than trying to better themselves … will kick that trend back into its downhill roll.
Disclaimer: Economic theory isn’t rocket science or brain surgery. Those things are easy, straightforward and uncomplicated by comparison. For anyone who thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d just like to note that recent evidence strongly indicates the economists don’t either. That’s why I prefer to operate on a fundamental, uncomplicated premise I call “common sense.”
Topics: America, Obama, history, money
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:14 am on Sunday, September 6, 2009
One Response to “Upward Mobility Downturn”
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September 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I hired a good many student workers for our university office over the years, and here is one reason why there’s such a discrepancy between blacks and whites: far too many of the black kids were in college without a basic fluency in standard English, no clue as to office etiquette (which was one reason to hire and teach them), and no real sense of responsibility (also one of our jobs to impart). All of them went on to jobs in the local big box stores (admittedly better pay), and eventually vanished from there as well. Not one of them was still in school by the time I left. I actually had a (white) faculty member tell me expecting them to learn to speak a more polished, mainstream version of English instead of ghetto street talk wasn’t sufficiently respectful of “black culture”, if not outright racist. Anybody who doesn’t recognize that as a tragedy for those kids is blind and brain-dead.