I just read the Economist article on Social Mobility and found it interesting. I agree that "well-off" youth have many advantages which effectively perpetuate their families socio-economic status. There are obviously barriers to upward social mobility that stem from lack of resources, education, expectations, etc. which keeps disadvantaged youth from climbing the economic ladder.
However, some of the stat's used in the article are difficult to compare over time periods because of the substantial increase of income inequality. It isn't surprising to see fewer people start in bottom income quintile and move to the highest when the gap between the two has increased by two or threefold. When I think of upward mobility I don't necessarily think about the ultra-poor becoming the ultra-rich. I think about the poor having the ability to earn a "middle-class" livelihood. I wonder if the two measures are correlated????
The article was very interesting and I enjoyed reading it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment