The Latest Chetty et al. Piece on Lack of Mobility: Thursday Focus (January 23, 2014)
**Justin Wolfers:** Twitter / JustinWolfers: Explaining the big new Chetty...: "Explaining the big new Chetty mobility study:
* No change in odds of moving higher or lower on the economic ladder than your parents.
* But higher income inequality today means that the rungs of the income ladder are now much further apart than in the past.
* Consequences of the “birth lottery” are larger now, because low mobility has bigger consequences.
* Bottom line of mobility study: Kids, more than ever, be careful to choose the right parents.
**Ben Walsh:** Economic mobility in America: relatively constant, but more consequential than ever: "U.S. economic mobility--the chances of moving up or down the income scale--has been relatively unchanged over last 20 years....
>About 8 percent of children born in the early 1980s who grew up in families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution managed to reach the top fifth for their age group today. The rate was nearly identical for children born a decade earlier.... [But] while mobility has been steady, inequality has been rising. And that has big consequences for the role luck plays in economic outcomes.... Put more succinctly by economist Justin Wolfers: “kids, more than ever, be careful to choose the right parents”.... Another reason to be worried: America’s level of economic mobility is much lower than other rich nations...
