Upward Mobility: It’s a Race Thing

...from a conservative source

The most important point that Winship makes is this: mobility might be low in America but the lack of mobility is most crushing at the lowest economic quintile, and particularly for African Americans.

The Americans who can’t leave the bottom fifth are disproportionately African American as well, adding a racial dimension to this issue that often gets ignored in conservative literature.

In a follow-up interview with FrumForum, Winship expanded on some of the black-white family differences that exacerbate these trends:

-Concentrated poverty. Winship notes that “two-thirds of black children experience a level of neighborhood poverty growing up that just 6 percent of white children will ever see.”

-Family structure. While Winship says the evidence is “mixed”, it seems that divorce is more likely to encourage downward mobility for African Americans if they start in the middle of the income distribution.