LSE Business Review blog:
Social mobility in the United States depends heavily upon where you live
6 January 2017
There is considerable geographical variation in the opportunities available to disadvantaged children in the United States, according to research by Raj Chetty, who delivered the 2016 Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures at LSE. Maria Molina-Domene talked to him about his findings, the use of big data and the implications for policy.
Raj began his first lecture with a striking comparison of how far the United States is from achieving ‘the American Dream’ in terms of social mobility. He highlighted the fact that the probability of a child born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution reaching the top fifth is 7.5 percent in the United States. This compares with the figure of 9 percent for the UK revealed in CEP research by Jo Blanden and Stephen Machin.