11/1/2021 The Decline of Social Mobility in America - The Atlantic
BUSINESS
Poor at 20, Poor for Life
A new study indicates that from the 1980s to the 2000s, it became less
likely that a worker could move up the income ladder.
ALANA SEMUELS JULY 14, 2016
JEFF TOPPING / REUTERS
It’s not an exaggeration: It really is getting harder to move up in America. ose who
make very little money in their rst jobs will probably still be making very little decades
later, and those who start off making middle-class wages have similarly limited paths.
Only those who start out at the top are likely to continue making good money
throughout their working lives.
at’s the conclusion of a new paper by Michael D. Carr and Emily E. Wiemers, two
economists at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. In the paper, Carr and
Wiemers used earnings data to measure how uidly people move up and down the
income ladder over the course of their careers. “It is increasingly the case that no matter
what your educational background is, where you start has become increasingly
important for where you end,” Carr told me. “e general amount of movement
around the distribution has decreased by a statistically signi cant amount.”
Carr and Wiemers used data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program
Participation, which tracks individual workers’ earnings, to examine how earnings
mobility changed between 1981 and 2008. ey ranked people into deciles, meaning
that one group fell below the 10th percentile of earnings, another between the 10th and
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/ 1/4
11/1/2021 The Decline of Social Mobility in America - The Atlantic
20th, and so on; then they measured someone’s chances of moving from one decile to
another. But the researchers wanted to see not just the probability of moving to a
different income bracket over the course of a career, but also how that probability has
changed over time. So they measured a given worker’s chances of moving between
deciles during two periods, one from 1981 to 1996 and another from 1993 to 2008.
ey found quite a disparity. “e probability of ending where you start has gone up,
and the probability of moving up from where you start has gone down,” Carr said. For
instance, the chance that someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above
the 40th percentile decreased by 16 percent. e chance that someone starting in the
middle of the earnings distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles
decreased by 20 percent. Yet people who started in the seventh decile are 12 percent
more likely to end up in the fth or sixth decile—a drop in earnings—than they used to
be.
Overall, the probability of someone starting and ending their career in the same decile
has gone up for every income rank. “For whatever reason, there was a path upward in
the earnings distribution that has been blocked for some people, or is not as steep as it
used to be,” Carr said.
Carr and Wiemers’ ndings highlight a de ning aspect of being middle class today, says
Elisabeth Jacobs, the senior director for policy and academic programs at the
Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the left-leaning think tank that published
Carr and Wiemers’ paper. “If you’re in the middle, you’re stuck in the middle, which
means there’s less space for others to move into the middle,” she said. “at suggests
there’s just a whole bunch of insecurity going on in terms of what it means to be a
worker. You can’t educate your way up.”
is lack of mobility holds even for people with a college degree, the researchers found.
Many college-educated workers started their careers at higher earnings deciles than
those before them did, but also tended to end their careers in a lower decile than their
predecessors. Women with college degrees also started off their careers earning at a
higher decile than they used to, and the presence of more college-educated women in
the workforce could be making it harder for men to move up the ranks.
Carr and Wiemers aren’t sure exactly why the American economy has become less
conducive to economic mobility. e decline in unions may play a role: Organized
labor was once better able to negotiate pay raises for their members, whatever their
career stage. Carr and Wiemers also cite the work of the economist David Autor, who
has found that the number of jobs at the bottom and the top of the pay scale is
increasing, while the number of jobs in the middle isn’t. If there were more employment
growth in the middle, those who start out at the bottom might have a better shot at
moving up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/ 2/4
11/1/2021 The Decline of Social Mobility in America - The Atlantic
Increasing income inequality may play a role, too. Carr and Wiemers found that the
earnings of the people in the top decile are much higher than they used to be, compared
to the overall population. at means it is increasingly harder to reach those top ranks.
“In the presence of increasing inequality,” they conclude, “falling mobility implies that
as the rungs of the ladder have moved farther apart, moving between them has become
more difficult.”
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to
[email protected].
Make your inbox more interesting.
Each weekday evening, get an overview of the day’s biggest news, along with fascinating ideas, images,
and people. See more newsletters
Enter your email Sign Up
Ideas that matter. Since 1857.
Subscribe and support 162 years of independent journalism. For less than $1 a week.
SUBSCRIBE
ABOUT
CONTACT
PODCASTS
SUBSCRIPTION
FOLLOW
Privacy Policy Do Not Sell My Personal Information Advertising Guidelines Terms Conditions Responsible Disclosure Site Map
TheAtlantic.com Copyright (c) 2021 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/ 3/4
11/1/2021 The Decline of Social Mobility in America - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240/ 4/4
