We are not who we think we are. The American self-image is spread with the golden glow of opportunity. We think of the United States as a land of unlimited possibility, not so much a classless society but as a place where class is mutable--a place where brains, energy and ambition are what counts, not the circumstances of one's birth. The Economic Mobility Project, an ambitious research led by Pew Charitable Trusts, looked at the economic fortunes of a large group of families over time, comparing the income of parents in the late 1960s with the income of their children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here is the finding: "The 'rags to riches' story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the top. That is right, just 6 percent of children born to parents who ranked in the bottom of the study sample, in terms of income, were able to bootstrap their way into the top . Meanwhile, an incredible 42 percent of children born into that lowest are still stuck at the bottom, having been unable to climb a single rung of the income ladder. It is noted that even in Britain---a nation we think of as burdened with a hidebound class system-children who are born poor have a better chance of moving up. When the studies were released, most reporters focused on the finding that African-Americans born to middle-class or upper middle-class families are earning slightly less, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than did their parents. One of the studies indicates, in fact, that most of the financial gains white families have made in the past three decades can be attributed to the entry of white women into the labor force. This is much less true for African-Americans. The picture that emerges from all the quintiles, correlations and percentages is of a nation in which, overall, "the current generation of adults is better off than the previous one", as one of the studies notes. The median income of the families in the sample group was $55,600 in the late 1960s; their children's median family income was measured at $71,900. However, this rising tide has not lifted all boats equally. The rich have seen far greater income gains than have the poor. Even more troubling is that our nation of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is "stickiness at the ends" --four out of ten children who are born poor will remain poor, and four out often who are born rich will stay rich. What did the Economic Mobility Project find in its research?
Children from low-income families are unable to bootstrap their way to the top. Hollywood actors and actresses are upwardly mobile from rags to riches. The rags to riches story is more fiction than reality. The rags to riches story is only true for a small minority of whites.