Divergent beliefs about poverty’s cause coexist with identical mobility.

Evidence

Surveys indicate that Europeans generally think that the poor are exploited and trapped in poverty, whereas Americans tend to believe that poor people are responsible for their situation and could pull themselves out of poverty through effort. (Note that both societies have approximately the same level of social mobility; Alesina & Glaeser 2004.) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 138

Categorization

• CANDY: Careful—the mobility note is dry context, but the core fact is a great cocktail-party point with real teeth.
• QUESTION: If actual mobility is identical, what explains the persistent belief gap—media, ideology, religious worldview?
• XREF: connects to: Beliefs about social permeability, not objective structure, shape whether people pursue mobility or change — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2680; Contact with foreigners plus environmental explanation of poverty dissolved nativist belief — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 700