The decline of upward mobility in one chart

[Torie]

Houston, we have a problem. Who knew?

 
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-decline-of-upward-mobility-in-one-chart/

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You either make the system work for people, or they will find someone who they think will destroy the system and replace it. Emphasis on "they think" and the dangers present with that are the collateral damage of leaving this to fester.

[Del Tachi]

The sharp declines in mobility for lower-income groups look like the disincentivizing effects of a growing redistributive welfare state.

[RI]

I suspect the 1940 and perhaps 1950 cohorts are inflated due to the Great Depression affecting their parents, but the 1960-1980 trend is certainly disturbing.

The crossing that occurred between 1960 and 1970 is also quite interesting. I would presume that's an affect of the Great Society aiding those on the lowest end of the spectrum?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

The sharp declines in mobility for lower-income groups look like the disincentivizing effects of a growing redistributive welfare state.

Does it though? The growth of the welfare state largely happened in the 1930s-70s, and upward mobility was generally stronger back then. I would think the lack of growth in real incomes for low-income workers would have a much greater impact.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The sharp declines in mobility for lower-income groups look like the disincentivizing effects of a growing redistributive welfare state.

Does it though? The growth of the welfare state largely happened in the 1930s-70s, and upward mobility was generally stronger back then. I would think the lack of growth in real incomes for low-income workers would have a much greater impact.

That's the ultimate problem here.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I wonder if this is adjusted for inflation...

[parochial boy]

I wonder if this is adjusted for inflation...

The US's real income per capita nearly tripled over the time frame of that chart, so you'd expect people to be moving up those categories. The two things that realy stick out are the solid 30% of people at the bottom whose incomes haven't moved in over 5 decades, and the fact that the graph almost completely stalls from 2002-16, indicating at best stagnating incomes, even despite real GDP per capita nominally growing by nearly 50% during that period.

As for the social mobility, it's a pretty well known point now that a more unequal society = a less mobile one, as being born in the right class gives you access to social capital, opportunities, institutions and so on that massively stack the playing field in your favour. If you want to have a society where people really can have a fair shot at life, then you've got to have a welfare state, taxes, redistribution, better wages and working conditions, a move away from the hyperfinancialised market economy. You know, the normal solutions.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

That's the ultimate problem here.

Yup that's my point too, that was my roundabout Canadian way of responding to Del Tachi's assertion that it was the welfare state that killed upward mobility.

[Hope For A New Era]

In other news, water is wet.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That's the ultimate problem here.

Yup that's my point too, that was my roundabout Canadian way of responding to Del Tachi's assertion that it was the welfare state that killed upward mobility.

I think it is more the other way around, that dependency is more of a symptom then a cause, which points the fingers back at neoliberalism and its failings causing the very problems that cause both the increased dependency and also by extension, the greater appetites for socialism and extreme populism.

[Skill and Chance]

Ehhh... I don't think the characterization of 1979-2019 as a period when it was unusually hard to get ahead in America is going to withstand historical scrutiny. 

[jamestroll]

There is literally zero economic mobility in this country. If you were born poor you are trapped permanently.

And its insane that the richer you are the less you pay in taxes

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

There is literally zero economic mobility in this country. If you were born poor you are trapped permanently.

Yup, that's why you are high middle class despite being born to the lowest level. 🙄 Quit acting like a fool.

[jamestroll]

There is literally zero economic mobility in this country. If you were born poor you are trapped permanently.

Yup, that's why you are high middle class despite being born to the lowest level. 🙄 Quit acting like a fool.

Social mobility is limited and there is little doubt that poor kids have trouble moving up.

[Skill and Chance]

There is literally zero economic mobility in this country. If you were born poor you are trapped permanently.

Yup, that's why you are high middle class despite being born to the lowest level.  Quit acting like a fool.

Social mobility is limited and there is little doubt that poor kids have trouble moving up.

It's more about 1945-75 being a time of exceptionally strong social mobility than about the modern era being uniquely problematic.  This was most likely due to the US economy benefiting from last man standing status during and for about a generation after WWII.  There was a similarly exceptional period of high low-skilled wages for the survivors of the Black Death in the late 1300's, but the fact that you have to look back several centuries just underscores how exceptional that period was.  This isn't to say we aren't better off in absolute terms today (we obviously are), but 1945-75 was a time when life was dramatically less competitive for the average American. 

[jaichind]

Due to several structural factors inherent in a service dominated economy

1)  Price's Law - 50% of the work in a company of N is done by the top square root of N employees means that there will be a tendency to bid up the market price of this top square root of N
2) Ability to deal with ever higher of abstraction means raw intelligence plays a much greater role in different levels of productivity of employees than in agricultural and even industrial sectors.  While it is not clear how much intelligence is hereditary it clearly must play a role.
3) 1) and 2) are on top of the social capital higher income families and be passed to their children which has been the case of centuries but 1) and 2) greatly exaggerates this impact.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Mobility is the wrong way to think about it. We don't want a constant churn of rich and poor people, we want maximum prosperity spread out among people such that fewer people are poor.


That said, yes. The American system is choking to the point where even the meritocratic lottery is breaking down.

[Lechasseur]

Mobility is the wrong way to think about it. We don't want a constant churn of rich and poor people, we want maximum prosperity spread out among people such that fewer people are poor.


That said, yes. The American system is choking to the point where even the meritocratic lottery is breaking down.

Totally agreed

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Looking at a chart like this, with mobility steadily declining from the early baby boomers onward, and concluding that the problem is muh welfare seems very much like right-wing motivated reasoning to me, unless Del Tachi wants to argue that there was a problem specific to the post-Great Society but pre-Reaganomics ~1968-1984 period that's still causing decreased mobility to this day even though almost all of the left-wing policy of that period has been rolled back except for Medicare and Medicaid.

The shift to a service economy is definitely making it harder for people to make a living "by the sweat of their brow", and "meritocracy"/"learn to code" rhetoric really doesn't help. Not everybody has the psychological makeup to be a biochemical engineer or an app developer, and even more than that, not everybody wants to.

[Lechasseur]

Looking at a chart like this, with mobility steadily declining from the early baby boomers onward, and concluding that the problem is muh welfare seems very much like right-wing motivated reasoning to me, unless Del Tachi wants to argue that there was a problem specific to the post-Great Society but pre-Reaganomics ~1968-1984 period that's still causing decreased mobility to this day even though almost all of the left-wing policy of that period has been rolled back except for Medicare and Medicaid.

The shift to a service economy is definitely making it harder for people to make a living "by the sweat of their brow", and "meritocracy"/"learn to code" rhetoric really doesn't help. Not everybody has the psychological makeup to be a biochemical engineer or an app developer, and even more than that, not everybody wants to.

Exactly

[Omega21]

A couple of visualizations that tell similar stories:

Damn, didn't know US healthcare got 2 times better since 2005.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

70-80 % those with parents at the very lowest income making more than them is still good in that it shows there is some upward mobility, though less than ideal. 

how much of this chart is showing the greater likelihood of downward mobility & delayed start to careers, rather than that the possibility of upward mobility has gone down?

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Mobility is the wrong way to think about it. We don't want a constant churn of rich and poor people, we want maximum prosperity spread out among people such that fewer people are poor.


That said, yes. The American system is choking to the point where even the meritocratic lottery is breaking down.

Totally agreed

Generational churn in and out of the upper classes is a positive phenomenon too, especially in a large, diverse country in which a sizable share of the poorest people are immigrants.

That's fine if there's a floor of standard of living. Without one, though...

[Lechasseur]

70-80 % those with parents at the very lowest income making more than them is still good in that it shows there is some upward mobility, though less than ideal. 

how much of this chart is showing the greater likelihood of downward mobility & delayed start to careers, rather than that the possibility of upward mobility has gone down?

I think to a very large degree it's downward mobility has gotten huge