JOURNAL;Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

By JASON DePARLE



WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American

life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from

humble origins to economic heights. "Movin' on up," George

Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.



But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional

wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their

peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been

widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass

unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward

center stage.



Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate

for president, warned this fall that movement "up into the middle

income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in

America." National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that

"most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates

of mobility." Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican

who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that

"mobility from the very bottom up" is "where the United States lags

behind."



Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on

the right is largely new.



"It's becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much

mobility as most other advanced countries," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an

economist at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think you'll find too

many people who will argue with that."



One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty,

which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may

be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for

college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents'

educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of

family background and stymies people with less schooling.



At least five large studies in recent years have found the United

States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by

Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42

percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay

there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much

higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a

country famous for its class constraints.



Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the

top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent

of the Danes.



Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless

society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the

top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research

by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom

two-fifths.



By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not

only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about

inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has

unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the

system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can

climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only

less equal, but also less mobile.



John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped

start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he

was "shocked" by the international comparisons. "Republicans will not

feel compelled to talk about income inequality," Mr. Bridgeland said.

"But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack

of access to the American Dream."



While Europe differs from the United States in culture and

demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor

with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the

University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men

raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared

with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men

raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of

Canadians.



"Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most

comparable countries," Professor Corak said in an interview.



Skeptics caution that the studies measure "relative mobility" — how

likely children are to move from their parents' place in the income

distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more

money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because

the country has grown richer.



Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a

better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of

Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for

family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.



Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit

immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American

strength. "If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone

should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.," said

Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.



The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more

mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review

Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th

percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings,

while an American family would need an additional $93,000.



Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid.

About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as

adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move

down, according to Pew research. The "stickiness" appears at the top

and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor

families stay trapped.



While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard's

Almanac, until recently there has been little data.



Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate

in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers' earnings

and those of their sons. But when better data became available a

decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond

twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the "elasticity" of

father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent

increase in a father's income, his sons' income can be expected to

increase by about 0.5 percent.



In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine

countries. He ranked Canada, Norway, Finland and Denmark as the most

mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other

extreme. Sweden, Germany, and France were scattered across the middle.



The causes of America's mobility problem are a topic of dispute —

starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a

thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children

vulnerable to debilitating hardships.



Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with

single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing

poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum,

who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States

also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of

racial stratification than its peers.



"The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom

fifth in other countries," said Scott Winship, a researcher at the

Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review.

"Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor."



A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated

workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good

learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children

of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and

arrive in them more prepared to learn.



"Upper-income families can invest more in their children's education

and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a

good education," said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage

Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists.



The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which

may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health

problems, like obesity and diabetes, which can limit education and

employment.



Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of

the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall

Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to

protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have

less mobility.



Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility "is overrated as a

social policy goal" compared with raising incomes across the board.

Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile

society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time.



But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it

will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970,

while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later.

Until more recent data arrives, he said, "we don't know the half of

it."