Route Fifty, June 18, 2019: How 10 cities are testing what works to increase economic mobility
If you scanned some of the financial headlines lately, you could be forgiven for thinking America had entered a new economic Golden Age.
You’d get a very different sense of the state of economic opportunity in America by talking to Mike and Willa Strickland of Dayton, Ohio. They were living with their boys in a homeless shelter until they found a spot in a public housing complex. Mike, a line worker at a meatpacking plant, recalled recently in a Frontline documentary how his parents were able to build a comfortable middle class life. He and his wife, who works in customer service, have struggled just to keep a roof over their heads.
The Stricklands’ story reflects what Harvard University economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues describe as the “fading American Dream.” While 90 percent of children born in the 1940s grew up to earn more than their parents, only half of children today will earn more than their parents. Millions of low-income young people are living in neighborhoods where their chances of climbing the economic ladder are slim.
