What is the problem?

Children’s opportunities to achieve upward economic mobility vary significantly across geography and demographic groups in America. Previous research has shown that today’s differences in economic mobility can be partly traced to historical factors such as slavery in the 1860s and red lines in credit lending from the 1930s. Given history’s long shadow, are economic opportunities largely fixed by historical policy, or can opportunities change over shorter, more policy-relevant time frames?

A recent study from Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights analyzes changes in economic opportunity using new data on 57 million children born between 1978 and 1992 from anonymized census and tax records. Although significant racial gaps remain, the researchers find rapid changes in the size of these gaps. Over the past 15 years, for example, the black-white gap in upward economic mobility has shrunk by 27%. During the same period, class gaps widened, and the gap in earnings between white children growing up in low- and high-income families increased by 28%. Further analysis shows that these trends were driven by changes in the social environments in which children grew up. The team’s findings demonstrate that opportunity is malleable within short time frames and provide new insights and data to expand opportunities going forward.

This research was conducted by Harvard University Professor Raj Chetty, director of Opportunity Insights; Harvard Kennedy School Professor of Public Policy Will Dobbie; Cornell University Assistant Professor Benjamin Goldman; Sonya R. Porter of the US Census Bureau; and Harvard Law School Professor Crystal S. Yang.

What does the research say?

• The black-white gap in upward mobility has narrowed significantly over the past 15 years, although racial gaps remain large. At the same time, gaps in white children’s outcomes widened by parental income.
• The geography of opportunity has changed in America: the coasts, which historically provided more avenues for upward mobility than other regions, no longer do. Moreover, in areas where black children’s outcomes improved the most, white children also fared relatively better.
• Divergent trends in mobility by race and class were driven by changes in the societies in which children grew up, as measured by parental employment rates.
• Social interaction is central to changing opportunities: Children’s outcomes are shaped by parental employment rates of peers with whom they interact most.