Sociologists like to talk about class stratification in America, which is one reason that no one pays much attention to sociologists. Americans have almost no consciousness of class, never having had an hereditary aristocracy nor a titled nobility. It's not that class doesn't exist, but it's remarkably subtle and messy and, more importantly, it is often decoupled from income. The guy working the big crane on the new Northern Technology Center (or whatever they are calling it) may make a lot more than the newly hired professor holding up his seven year old son to watch the action. But there is a real sense in which the one belongs to a "lower" class than the other.
The clue comes when the crane operator has to sit there while his heavy bundle is unloaded fifty feet over his head. What does he do with his time? He fishes a cigarette out of his pocket. Inevitably. And when he goes to lunch with the crew, everyone in the truck lites up. The new professor doesn't smoke, nor does his wife or anyone else in his department. He may be able to think of one or two colleagues in other departments who sneak outside for a smoke, but he would have to think hard. Such fine distinctions are the stuff of class in America.
One of the reasons that this doesn't correlate well with income is that distinctions in income are not nearly so durable as such cultural distinctions as mentioned above. Economic mobility in the U.S. is far greater than in most other countries, or than anywhere ever before. Consider the following chart:
This table presents the results of a study that has tracked over six thousand American families over more than thirty years. The study (I believe it is called the Panel Study on Income Dynamics) divides Americans into five "quintiles" according to economic standing. It answers some very important questions. How much influence does a parent's economic standing have on his child's future? Answer: a lot, but not nearly as much as one would expect.
The left side of the chart examines where children born in the top quintile end up, economically speaking. 38% stay in the top, which is not surprising. After all, they eventually inherit their parent's wealth, and on the way take advantage of the networking. But most move down. Another 27% end up in the second highest quintile,which tells you, if you needed to hear it, that the best way to end up wealthy is to start out that way. On the other hand, a substantial chunk of rich kids fall further down, and a small portion, 6%, fall all the way from the penthouse to the trailer park.
The right side of the diagram tracks the children of the poorest cohort. 42% stay put, which is the bad news. Fully sixty six percent end up in the bottom two quintiles. Climbing out of poverty is a game that favors the house. But a good third manage it, and 7% make it all the way to the grand prize. In short, the chances of someone going from the very bottom to the top are same as someone going from the top to the bottom.
What are we to make of this? I suspect that this degree of income fluidity is unprecedented in human history, and probably not achieved anywhere else on the contemporary globe. In Peru, if you were born in a shanty on the city dump, your children will probably die there. If your Algerian parents raised you in a French suburb, well, get used to it. In America you have a seven percent chance of going all the way to the top. Imagine buying a lottery ticket with those odds.
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