One of the most troubling trends of our time is the decline in economic opportunity. From the early 20th century until the 1980s, children consistently out-earned their parents. Then the tide stopped rising and children's odds of out-earning their parents became entirely random, as Stanford economist Raj Chetty has shown.
This sorry state of affairs persists today. If you're born into a household earning $250,000 a year, it might not trouble you much. But children born into poorer households know firsthand the pain of declining economic mobility. Seventy percent of American children born poor will never make it to the middle class, according to a study by Pew Research. An invisible anchor tethers them in place, largely irrespective of their abilities or work ethics. For them, the American Dream has become a nightmare.
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