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Socio-economic mobility

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Socio-economic mobility Affluent places are now pulling away from poorer ones … This geographical divergence has dramatic consequences. A child born in the bottom 20% in wealthy San Francisco has twice much chance as a similar child in Detroit of ending up in the top 20% as an adult. Boys born in London's Chelsea can expect to live nearly nine years longer than those born in Blackpool. Opportunities are limited for those stuck in the wrong place. The Economist, October 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Canada, in fact, is the most socially mobile developed country, says the OECD: nearly three-quarters of Canadians aged 25 to 64 were in a different social class than their parents between 2002 and 2014. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Despite our rhetoric, equal opportunity has never been the American way. For nearly all our history, affirmative action has been the prerogative of white men. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The drawbridge is rising. The gap between the self image of meritocratic openness and reality is wide. Psychologists call this “self-discrepancy”. Economists call it barriers to entry. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The First Shall Be First Title of the Introduction to Thomas Frank's Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants. Peter Coy, New York Times, July 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility  [I]n countries without elite universities, it's rare for one class to capture the national heights: careers are decided more in adulthood, by which time people's trajectories depend slightly more on their achievements than on their parents. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, August 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility “Methodists are frustrated Baptists who'd like to be Episcopalians,” said Lucy Mattie Trigg. That is: They'd like to whoop and holler, but they're not deaf to the clarion call of upward mobility. Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral © 2018 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility The more an underclass peacefully approaches economic and political equality, the more violent and resentful the overclass grows. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility [M]ost of the decline in absolute mobility is driven by the more unequal distribution of economic growth in recent decades, rather than by the slowdown in GDP growth rates. In this sense, the rise in inequality and the  decline in absolute mobility are closely linked.  Growth is an important driver of absolute mobility,  but high levels of absolute mobility require broad- based growth across the income distribution. With the current distribution of income, higher  GDP growth rates alone are insufficient to restore absolute mobility to the levels experienced by children in the 1940s and 1950s. If one wants to revive the “American dream” of high rates of absolute mobility, then one must have an interest in growth that is spread more broadly across the income distribution. Raj Chetty et. al., Science, April 24, 2017 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Pity them or not, according to taste, but be afraid of what the falling can take down with them. Janan Ganesh,  “Beware the downwardly mobile,” Financial Times, March 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Rising immobility and rising inequality aren't like two pieces of driftwood that happen to have shown up up on the beach at the same time, he [economist Alan Kreuger] noted. They wash up together on every shore. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Since most of Washington's spending on economic mobility comes through tax expenditures – subsidies that individual filers claim via their IRS returns – there is clearly foreknowledge of the outcome. The poor do not file tax returns. The rich have accountants. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Them that's got are them that gets Ray Charles © 2015 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility There has been a relentless decline in absolute mobility from one generation to the next: from over 90 percent when Biden was born [in 1942] to around 50 percent for those who were born in the 1980s. In other words, if you were born in 1985, you are as likely to be less well off than your parents as you are to be richer. Just as the rise in mobility for Biden’s generation was virtually unique, this subsequent fall is also greater than in almost any other country. Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, January 18, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility To be clear, white Americans don't resent growing poorer. They resent losing their comparative superiority to non-white Americans. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Today it is rarer for a poor American to become rich than a poor Briton, which means the American Dream is less likely to be realised in America. The meritocratic society has given way to a hereditary meritocracy. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Liberal Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility You can have a shot at joining the one percent, money tells us, only if you are first committed to making the one percent stronger, to defending their piles in some new and imaginative way, to rationalizing and burnishing their glory, to exempting them from regulation or taxation and bowing down as they pass. Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Socio-economic mobility You don't know a ladder has splinters until you slide down it. Bum Phillips © 2019 Kwiple.com