A society, in other words, at odds with its own deeply held values.

What values? This evidence doesn't disprove America is still the land of opportunity and social mobility (even for the poor). Americans have always understood that a child raised in a commune is probably less likely to want to succeed than a senators son. But this doesn't necessarily mean the child raised in a commune has less opportunity for success. Asian Americans, for instance, have the highest median income no thanks to their grandparents high net worth. If Americans are really as misguided as you claim how do you explain Asian Americans or protestant immigrants or many other poor cultural groups of people who have managed to succeed?

And is it really effective or desirable to try and equalize outcomes? As long as a poor kid raised in the ghetto has at least the opportunity (assuming he wants it) to succeed then what is the problem?

The juxtaposition with the Gates article is precious.

This an important post, too bad most have been too fully imbued with propaganda to realize it's importance.

Would Ezra or someone else explain a little how to read the first graph? It's an odd display in my experience.

Re: gordon gekko: Ezra doesn't say that outcomes should be equalized, he only points out that the evidence regarding outcomes implies that opportunity is not nearly as equally available as many believe. When opportunity is widespread, family history should not be a good predictor of a randomly chosen individual's level of success. In the U.S., apparently, it is a better predictor than in the other countries listed--even including the effect on the data that comes from the Asian-American experience.

gordon: the data says that people in the USA are less likely to be able to do better than their parents than people born in other countries. An individual person may or may not take advantage of such opportunities - but the fact that so few people can change says that the problem is really the system.

There is a serendipity occurring in the publishing world. Connect Gladwell’s “Outliers” to Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly’s new book “Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back”

See http://www.alternet.org/workplace/109509/ for an intro to it.

michael

While I agree with the point in general, this graph certainly does not make it. All it says is that there is less economic mobility. For instance, it says absolutely nothing about the level of difficulty in changing strata, nor why there is such a difficulty. Maybe in other countries it's easier to get to some mean level? Which is mobility in any direction you come from. Maybe in America it's *relatively* easier to get from the bottom level to the top? I don't know? These graphs say absolutely nothing about that, but they do look kind of pretty and make for decently misleading bit of evidence.

Indeed, our countrymen are much likelier to believe that people are rewarded for their effort and much less likely to believe that family riches are important for getting ahead than residents of other countries.

As a labor economist, I'd be careful about some of the sous-entendres here. Specifically, the graphs show that children from richer families end up with larger gains. This could be income directly, but it could be that family richers are only a proxy for other factors, such as parental education. In the last 30 years, we've seen increasing shares of income go to the educated population. Similarly, much of the literature on educational attainment doesn't show parents' income mattering nearly as much as their own education.

Yes, in the US the children of the poor tend to do worse than elsewhere. Anecdotally, we also have higher returns to education than elsewhere. And there might be other confounding factors. From a public policy standpoint, the question is what is it that we value: equally rising income across parents' income groups from one generation to the next across income groups, or equally increasing income as a result of equalized education across parents' income groups from one generation to the next, or something entirely else.

jte,
the first graph compares family income by quintile (20%), and the median of each quintile, in 1968 and 2004. really, it speaks more to rising inequality than what we normally think of as mobility. it says that the top quintile makes more than half again as much as the top quintile did a generation before and that, while all quintiles have seen growth, the lower groups have seen less and less. kid destroyer's totally right that this graph is unrelated to ezra's point.

kid destroyer,
while the first graph doesn't really make the point, true, the second one does address some of what you're looking for. it's about how tied sons' earnings are to their fathers'. and it says that in the us, you're more likely to share an income level w/ your father than in most other countries in the chart.

gg,
the second chart really does say that we're at odds w/ our values. and didn't gordon gekko go to jail?

- but the fact that so few people can change says that the problem is really the system.

The problem may be the system but these graphs don't necessarily prove Europe is some opportunity rich utopia while America isn't. Europe has simply gone after economic immobility. They have discouraged the ambitious rich kids from success while spending billions to push the bottom up. Who cares that a child from a family of doctors is more willing to follow his parents footsteps. Or who cares that a child from an underachieving group probably has less pressure and motivation to succeed (i.e. succeed as we define succeed doctors, lawyers...). But not only are Europe's public policies expensive and perhaps counterproductive they have nothing to do with opportunities or the American dream. America has always been about the ability to go from rags to riches not the likelihood (at least when the likelihood is related to cultural preferences).

America has always been about the ability to go from rags to riches not the likelihood (at least when the likelihood is related to cultural preferences).

"The exception proves the rule"?

Grow the fuck up, gekko.

Once again, Nordic (or Scandinavian) societies come out on top (and so does their high-latitude cousin Canada). Time after time, the Nordic states demonstrate that they lead the world. Why might that be? Could it have something to do with their long and strong democratic traditions, their commitment to social democracy, their relatively small populations, various miscellaneous beneficial features of their specific cultures, and their racial/cultural homogeneity? In a word, yes.

The lesson is clear—the United States ought to become much more like the Nordic societies if it wants to achieve more equality, more prosperity, more human happiness. The problem is that for a long time the US has been devolving into a Developing Country and an increasingly failed one at that. Let's instead aim to become a jumbo size Denmark.

Gordon Gekko appears to be arguing that Americans are more stolid and lumpen than other, foreign people, and less likely to take advantage of the limitless opportunities that he knows are available to them. This would agree with his claims about second generation immigrants doing really well (before the American lassitude overwhelms them), but I'm not sure how he explains this odd difference in ambition.

Gordon, given that (as you claim) Americans have plenty of opportunity, and given (as the charts show) that they get so much less results from this opportunity than foreigners do, what do you think causes Americans to be so lacking in drive or entrepeneurship?

Shane, it's worse than that, actually. Evidence has been given that refutes the meme of America's glorious tradition of class mobility.

If Gordon wishes, he may introduce evidence of his own to prove the original assertion true. He gets bupkas for making yet another one of those 'how did you control for variables x, y, & Z?' type of questions. Let him do his own damn research.

I'd also be interested in what he thinks would constitute a disproof of the assertion, but I'm not at all certain he's thought that far ahead yet.

Let's stipulate that in generation 1 a relatively high level of mobility is achieved and, moreover, a diverse set of outcomes is achieved. The result will be that relatively wealthier people will, on average, have better work and family habits and higher average intelligence while the relatively poorer will, on average, have the opposite traits. Assume further that both the salutary and disadvantageous are passed, at least in part, down to children. In generation 2 you would thus expect there to be less income mobility. I think we can pretty reasonably argue that we had a generation 1 some time in the past in the U.S.

Why are we different from Europe in this regard? European governance was significantly more socialistic in the past (and, yes, even the Nordic countries have become significantly more capitalistic in recent decades). That means that prior generations had little variation in income. As a result, they are now in generation 1 and so it's no surprise that they have more income mobility.

important post

Shane,

I don't feel Americans are less driven than Europeans. All these charts show, to me, is that European public policies have been quite radical in making sure the child's income is not the same as the parents. This is not the same as proving America has less opportunities for people of different SES.

ScentOfViolets,

I did make my case. Asian-Americans' rapid rise to the top is proof Ezra's (or the left's) thesis is incorrect. Honestly, how, can liberals explain why a non-white, low initial wealth, low initial education, non-english, and immigrant group succeeded without bringing up cultural traits? And if poor Asians can succeed with hard work why can't anyone else?
I am not trying to insult different cultures. To each his own, I guess. But at least looking at how certain groups perform gives you an idea of your limits and potential. Of course there are perfectly reasonable reasons why children tend to earn similar to their parents in America and there is nothing wrong with people earning roughly what there parents did. Ezra makes this out to be shocking but nothing he has said is even the slightest bit surprising. But please try and convince me, and I assume most Americans, that the American dream is inferior to the European one.

gordon - all that you are arguing is that you *know*, really, that the USA is super-special. There is no data that will convince you otherwise; you're arguing in the face of a lot of evidence to the contrary and basically saying "just because" as a response.

There is something deeply wrong with your lot in life being determined by how much your parents make. It's a logical result of policies that favor giving more to those with more. Fortunately the Republican party is discredited and we can now move back in the direction of sanity.

Gekko's most compelling point is simply that culture matters, something that is of course true but absolutely taboo to mention among progs.

When it comes to academic and economic achievement as well as much else, I as a white American am not ashamed to admit that numerous Asian cultures are far superior--at least Japanese, Chinese, Korean and perhaps Vietnamese, Thai, and others too. Face it, whitey and blackie and brownie, the average immigrant from those cultures and his/her descendents beats all of us hands down almost every time. Why can't we Americans, whatever our color, learn something from Asian immigrants? Like getting off our fat asses.

It is interesting how many people in the USA choose to pursue winner take all occupations like sports music, art etc. this might imply that a large disparity in income actually has a benefit. People even buy lottery tickets were the odds are awful and they seem to like lotteries that have fewer bigger winners. Odd that. Is this the same in Europe? I am risk averse so I pursued a career in computer programming.

BTW how big are the differences between countries? What do the numbers in figure 2 mean?

Could the USA lag because more of our income comes from the ownership of capital?

Does anyone know the publication date of this report? I've downloaded it and searched but can't find it.

There have been a number of interesting points raised, and I want to come back on some of them:

1. Opportunity vs. income mobility – GG raises the point that equal opportunity is not tantamount to intergenerational movement across income groups. Fair enough. But it’s all we’ve got at a macro level. We assume that everyone is trying to move up as much as possible. On a micro level, we could of course use experiments like Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) and send resumes with the same background but “black-sounding” names or poor areas for the address.
2. Winner takes all occupations – Floccina argues that perhaps the disparity between us and Europe is explained by our greater number of winner takes all occupations. But that would only make sense if those occupations really produced wealth on average and where success is correlated with parents’ income. But few Americans are entrepreneurs, and most sports stars do well despite poor parents.
3. Income mobility among Asians – GG argues that opportunity does not discriminate against entire racial or ethnic groups (to the extent that culture does not matter), pointing to Asian-Americans. While recent second-generation Asian Americans have done much better than their parents, they still haven’t done as well as Whites. There is a specious argument that they have, as reported by Time around 1999, where Asian households were earning more than Whites, but they had more workers per household, and per capita they were earning much less. Furthermore, this can be expected, as the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 permitted Asians based on education, selecting the most educated. While education and its market value can be very specific to a country, education from any country is highly correlated with educational attainment among children. Asking if Asian children will do well is like asking if the children of Cornell West will do well.
4. European focus on income mobility – GG also argues that European countries have taken extreme measures to favor income mobility (based only on the graphs). I’m not sure. In France and the UK, the main policies are free high quality primary and secondary educations for all, some subsidies for poor families (housing allocations, food stamps for the extremely poor), and complete health insurance. I know France does not allow for payday lenders or subprime loans which bring greater risk to the poor. They also provide cheap low-quality public tertiary education for the masses and cheap high-quality tertiary public education for the best of the best. Finally, there’s unemployment insurance (which is only for those who had a job). I’m not sure these policies are radical given public sentiment in the US. What they do is remove the main poverty traps – health bills, unemployment due to sickness and poor education due to lack of access to the credit markets.

ScentOfViolets,

I did make my case. Asian-Americans' rapid rise to the top is proof Ezra's (or the left's) thesis is incorrect. Honestly, how, can liberals explain why a non-white, low initial wealth, low initial education, non-english, and immigrant group succeeded without bringing up cultural traits? And if poor Asians can succeed with hard work why can't anyone else?
I am not trying to insult different cultures. To each his own, I guess. But at least looking at how certain groups perform gives you an idea of your limits and potential. Of course there are perfectly reasonable reasons why children tend to earn similar to their parents in America and there is nothing wrong with people earning roughly what there parents did. Ezra makes this out to be shocking but nothing he has said is even the slightest bit surprising. But please try and convince me, and I assume most Americans, that the American dream is inferior to the European one.

Posted by: gordon gekko

No, you have given no evidence. Evidence would be something like cites, tables of figures, that sort of thing. Instead of some sort of breezy factoid that - I'm guessing you're thinking - 'everyone knows'. To tell the truth, I really can't make sense of what seems to be a rather rambling argument on your part.

But please try and convince me, and I assume most Americans, that the American dream is inferior to the European one.

Now you're just babbling. I don't have to convince you of anything. You have to convince me that there's a lot of this class mobility you're going on about. Not just state it as a fact and then demand that I disprove it to your satisfaction. With that sort of thinking, maybe the old Soviet Union would be more to your liking.

The lesson is clear—the United States ought to become much more like the Nordic societies if it wants to achieve more equality, more prosperity, more human happiness. The problem is that for a long time the US has been devolving into a Developing Country and an increasingly failed one at that. Let's instead aim to become a jumbo size Denmark.

No, you have given no evidence. Evidence would be something like cites, tables of figures, that sort of thing. Instead of some sort of breezy factoid that - I'm guessing you're thinking - 'everyone knows'. To tell the truth, I really can't make sense of what seems to be a rather rambling argument on your part.