U.S. class mobility is lower than many European countries despite its anti-aristocratic myth

Evidence

One surprising finding about mobility is that it is lower in the United States than in Canada, Britain or France. However, the U.S. rate is a bit higher than in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place. But the United States differs from Europe in ways that can gum up the mobility machine. Because income inequality is greater here, there is a wider disparity between what rich and poor parents can invest in their children. Perhaps as a result, a child’s economic background is a better predictor of school performance in the United States than in Denmark, the Netherlands or France, one recent study found. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 925

Categorization

• SHARE: A comparative-mobility data point worth sending to an economist or education-policy friend working on intergenerational mobility.
• XREF: connects to: Class mobility in the U.S. is low and falling — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 921; American ruling classes are now generating the same social passivity Europe had — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1126; American founding documents and frontier myths serve bourgeois class interests — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 873

Broader Connections

• American ruling classes are now generating the same social passivity Europe had #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1126
• American founding documents and frontier myths serve bourgeois class interests #expands (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 873