inequality and social mobility

American tolerance of inequality has historically rested upon an assumption of shared opportunity. The trouble is, America is now not very equal in terms of opportunity, either.

Scholars are wrestling with the question of how income inequality and intergenerational mobility are related to each other. Intuitively, it seems harder to climb a ladder when the rungs are farther apart. So inequality may cause immobility, in a relationship popularized by the economist Alan Krueger as a “Great Gatsby Curve.” But it is not a straightforward relationship. For one thing, there are some nations with similar rates of inequality to the United States, but much higher rates of mobility, such as Canada and Australia.

Meanwhile, in other nations with low rates of social mobility, such as Italy, greater government redistribution softens the blow. The children of the poor may end up poor, but their poverty is less biting than in the United States. And of course there are some countries that are both equal and enjoy mobility, such as those in Scandinavia.

Inequality and immobility are a toxic combination regardless. An unequal, immobile society will mutate into a stratified one with sharply separated classes, generation after generation.

Richard V. Reeves, “What the Inequality Debate Leaves Out“, CNN Opinion, 7 January 2014. Also posted here.

There is much more at the link.

British writer Richard V. Reeves (born 1969) is policy director of the Center on Children and Families and a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

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