Social Mobility

The NY Times is running a series on the changing social mobility of Americana, over the last several decades. Social mobility is essentially the fluidity of individuals born into a given social class to move into another later in adulthood. Social mobility is measured most profoundly by the poorest ability to move up socially. The conclusion of researchers in this study is that social mobility has stagnated and indeed may be declining, while many people falsely believe the opposite and think that the greatest opportunity to rise from poverty to wealth still exist in the USA. The study notes that Great Britain and our own United States have the lowest rates of social mobility in the developed world.

One of the obvious reasons that the USA has one of the developed worlds least socially mobile populations is due to the phenomenon of being amongst the most racist in conjunction with the disadvantage of being lower class. The United States has one of the largest minority populations of the developed world. In the research compiled in the study, data revealed that blacks were nearly 3 times less socially mobile than their white contemporaries in American society. What this means is that for blacks, if you are born into a poor family, you are nearly 3 times more likely to remain in a state of poverty into adulthood than if you were white and born into poverty. Consequently, racism in America, if one assumes that genetic inferiority is not responsible for the increased class inertia, has constrained class mobility in America to a significant degree.

What I also found interesting is how much time the author uses for juxtaposing status temporally. The author’s noted how middle class people today live with the comforts that only the elite rich enjoyed some 50 years ago. In my opinion, class and status is a point in time metric. Class and status is relative to how people are positioned, relative to each other, at a given point or window in time. Thus, it serves no purpose to compare the comforts of middle or lower class people today, to those of classes in the past. The reason being is that each generation inherits the current state of knowledge and science from the previous and hence improves upon it enough to advance the efficiency or comfort of living. Therefore, each generation, regardless of class, will have the benefits of improved technology and comfort added to one degree or another to their lives. Thus, what defines class is not what one can afford and enjoy relative to those in the past, but relative to those that exist with them in the present.

It is clear to me that social mobility is the product of economic forces of supply and demand. When opportunity is in abundance, social mobility, barring discrimination, should be at its highest levels. Therefore, the research that shows that social mobility in the USA has stagnated, if not fallen, over the aggregate of the last 30 years, is evidence in the decline in relative opportunity for many in America. Theoretically, if there was no growth in economic opportunity, then the only way for one to gain opportunity and wealth is for another to loose opportunity and wealth. Hence, there would be no net gain, but only shifts in who posses the wealth. Such a hypothetical of shifting economic mobility in times of no growth is highly unlikely because wealth is power and power has the ability to manipulate politics and policy so that they can maintain their wealth and advantage over the poor, to such a degree that they or their children will never switch places.

The series measuring of class mobility changes is simply one more piece of a puzzle that reveals a picture of America on the decline. However, the implication of a reduction in class mobility is most ominous for African Americans. The reason being is that class is one of the inherited legacies and disadvantages born from centuries of slavery and discrimination. Hence, blacks are disproportionately pooled in the lower classes as a resultant of America never reconciling or repairing the damage it inflected from centuries of oppression. The researches estimated that class leaves a five generation advantage or disadvantage, on average, upon descendants emanating from wealthy or poor families. Given that, blacks have an inherited disadvantage born from America’s suppression, oppression and repression of black people, that gives whites a contemporary advantage in contemporary competition for opportunity. This we all know.

The study notes that going forward; education will become an even more prominent filter for class distribution and allocation. The study also noted that educational attainment is highly correlated with class today. Thus, if one puts two and two together one sees a further reduction in class mobility (four) as only the well off will be able to provide the type of quality education to offspring that will allow them to compete for opportunities in occupations that will allow one to reach the upper classes. With the decline of high paying manufacturing jobs for the non-college educated in the economy, hard work, in and of it self will fade as a means of social elevation as brain power and education becomes the dominant filter to the median and upper classes.

This is not to suggest that our economy will become dominated by brain power over brawn power. The truth is that currently only about 26% of jobs demanded in the economy require a college degree and most of the new job growth projected over the next 20 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will be in occupations that do not require a college degree. In other words, the greatest numerical growth in employment will be in professions that do not require a lot of brain power and these jobs will not pay what the jobs of the past paid that required little brain power, like manufacturing. Consequently, if every adult over the age of 25 ran out and earned college degrees, you would have the phenomenon of too many educated people chasing too few jobs that require college education. Therefore, someone with a degree will still have to be a janitor, cashier, maid, food service employee ect., because there are simply not enough jobs being created that require a college background to accommodate a college educated labor pool.

In conclusion, the series reveals disconnect between perception and reality in regards to what America offers in relative and absolute terms. The nation and world is rapidly changing and the absolute and relative offering of America, compared to the rest of the world, and is also changing. I think America and Americans are living off a reputation of America created in the past that is lagging its current reality.