The New York Times has a demographic map showing that it’s tougher for people from the bottom quintile to rise to the top quintile in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and the Old Confederate States.
In large swaths of those states, a kid born in the bottom twenty percent has a 4% chance of rising to the top twenty percent. I expect North Dakota’s shale boom combined with relatively low income disparity and sparse population allows that number to rise from 4% to 35%. In most areas, it seems more like 15%.
Climbing the income ladder occurs less often in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, the data shows, with the odds notably low in Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. By contrast, some of the highest rates occur in the Northeast, Great Plains and West, including in New York, Boston, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Seattle and large swaths of California and Minnesota.
. . .
That variation does not stem simply from the fact that some areas have higher average incomes: upward mobility rates, Mr. Hendren added, often differ sharply in areas where average income is similar, like Atlanta and Seattle.The gaps can be stark. On average, fairly poor children in Seattle — those who grew up in the 25th percentile of the national income distribution — do as well financially when they grow up as middle-class children — those who grew up at the 50th percentile — from Atlanta.
This news along with the story from the New Scientist (published in Slate) that shows American is just about the sickest country of the rich countries sort of flies in the face of the chest beating “this is the greatest country in the world” types. And, of course we are becoming less equitable by the day.
Maybe the sickness thing helps explain why “Freedom” says we are becoming more wimpy, but the right wing demagogues might win southern elections if people are too sick to vote. Maybe there’s a story in that.
I read that when it came out and I thought it was very interesting; I can’t wait for more detailed analyses that look more into causation.
I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure that the results are necessarily dated, as it seems like they used the salaries of people at age 30 and 45 to determine what quintile you were in. This would mean that the results are actually from people born in 1968 and 1983. Which may or may not have a lot of bearing on kids who are being born today – everyplace has changed a lot in the past 45 years, but probably few places more than Atlanta or Charlotte. So I think it’s really important to keep tracking this kind of information to see how (and if possible why) it changes over time.
I thought I read in passing that Atlanta & Charlotte were suffering some pretty significant reversals of late. I wish I could remember where I read that.