Are children born today destined to remain in the same economic class as their parents? No.
Have the chances for changing economic class diminished over the past decades? Or over the past few years? No.
The answers come from some recent research summarized in The Milken Institute Review. Their rather bland conclusion is that “the trend line for relative mobility has been flat for the past few decades. . . . It is simply not the case that the amount of intergenerational relative mobility has declined over time.” Children today have the same chance of changing their lot as children in the United States have had for many a decade.
